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<concept xml:lang="en" id="GUID-B85CA4E7-3DF5-5D5C-BF7B-5D0DDCD468AE"><title>What are containers</title><shortdesc>This topic describes the abstract idea of a containers. A container is the general term for a field, a record, a link and a table. </shortdesc><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody> <p>A container is the general term for a Table, a Record, a Field, and a Link. </p> <p>A container is an element, and is an item that the CommsDat implementation can store in the Comms Database. </p> <p>A container allows tools and applications and the CommsDat implementation to prepare, store and change the data in the client process. A container acts like a cache of Comms Database information in the client process. </p> <p>A container derives from <xref href="GUID-1CDD0B97-8B00-3373-9908-512C9BC1CF51.dita"><apiname>CMDBElement</apiname></xref>. A container inherits the behaviour of an element and the behaviour that allows it to operate with the Comms Database. </p> <p>All function calls to a Container perform actions that are local to that Container. Actions can propagate down to other elements in the container. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> </conbody></concept>