Gconf backend reads values on demand ?

Hi,

Does the GConf daemon read the value of a key from the %gconf.xml
files on demand (that is when an application queries it the first
time) or does it read all the values which are set at startup time
itself.

I tried looking up the gconf backends code. From that, it looks like
it is the first case, however I am not able to find that for sure.

Thanks for your help !

regards
Hemanth