Where are the dashboard confiugrations stored?

A single project area has "lost" its dashboards after a server problem. I always assumed that all the information about the dashboard (who it belongs to, what viewlets are present in what order, what the parameters are) is stored in the repository (and not on the file system).

Is my assumption correct (dashboard stored in repository), and is there any way to "recover" the dashboard settings without rolling back to a backup of the database (and potentially losing work).

many thanks

anthony