As you define sources of dynamic content in the Bindings panel (recordsets, server objects, JavaBeans, and so on), Dreamweaver MX stores their definitions in a Design Note for later use. This is called "caching" your content sources.

When you're away from your database server, Dreamweaver retrieves the content sources from the Design Note and lists them in the Bindings panel. You can add dynamic content and server behaviors to your page as you normally would using the cached content sources. If you have a slow connection to your database server, caching may even speed up development.

However, working without a database imposes a few restrictions: you can't define new recordsets, modify existing recordsets, copy and paste recordsets from one page to another, and you can't switch to Live Data view without your application server.