I may not be able to explain this well, but "you" do not render. Rendering is done as the last stage (render response) of the
JSF lifecycle and control of the rendering process is done primarily by the JSF Controller (FacesServlet) which takes the compiled View templates and produces the response data stream by merging the View with the Models (backing beans).
So
you should be able to load the database data into a Model using the action method that resulted in the production of the View. The normal processes of the JSF lifecycle will take care of the rest.
In the case where no action was fired (a URL was submitted for initial page display), you need to find an alternative way to populate the Model.
As it happens, there's a single solution for both scenarios. What I do is null out my sub-model object (which is typically a DataModel wrapping the actual database data). Then, when JSF does its initial "get" on the submodel property, I do the fetch, construct the sub-model property and cache it. This is important, because otherwise the data might get loaded 5-6 times in a single page request and response time would be atrocious.
Thus, at any time, for any reason, I can refresh the data view by simply nulling out the sub-model again.
