Using a relational database

Overview

Out-of-the-box, Orbeon Forms includes an SQLite embedded database with multiple demo forms. This setup is designed for a quick start, but for development or production use, you should configure Orbeon Forms to utilize a separate relational database.

The setup for the relational persistence layers is a 3-step process. The first two steps are database specific, so please refer to the relevant subsections below.

1. Database setup: You set up the database and create a schema with a few tables. This is typically be done by a DBA.

2. Application server setup: You configure your application server to use the database.

3. Orbeon Forms setup: You configure Orbeon Forms to use the relevant persistence layer.

You can find more about the relational database schema in the Relational database schema page.

Support for Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2 are Orbeon Forms PE features.

See also Removing the built-in SQLite database.

Database setup

Oracle database setup

1. Make sure that Oracle's Database Character Set is set to AL32UTF8, also as recommended by Oracle. You can see you database parameters by running the following query: select * from nls_database_parameters, and the Database Character Set is identified by nls_characterset.

2. Create a user/schema in Oracle, for instance with the commands below. In this example "all privileges" are granted to the newly created user/schema, which is not strictly required. You might want to fine-tune permissions on your system as appropriate. If you had already created this schema and that the definition changed, or that you want to restart from scratch for some other reason, you can first delete the schema with all the data it contains with drop user orbeon cascade.

   > sqlplus sys/password as sysdba
   SQL> CREATE USER ORBEON IDENTIFIED BY password ;
   SQL> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES TO orbeon ;
   SQL> GRANT UNLIMITED TABLESPACE TO orbeon ;

3. Run the following DDL to create or update your Orbeon database, and note that if upgrading to 2016.2, you need to reindex your Orbeon database.

Orbeon Forms version(s)	DDL to create from scratch	DDL to upgrade from previous format
2024.1 and newer	oracle-2024_1.sql	oracle-2019_1-to-2024_1.sql
2022.1 to 2023.1	oracle-2019_1.sql	oracle-2018_2-to-2019_1.sql

For older DDL see Relational database schema.

Oracle binary XML storage

With Oracle 11.2, XMLType values are stored by default using the binary XML storage. The binary XML storage has numerous benefits over the basic file storage. In many respect, it is the "proper" way to store XML. However, we found that Oracle fails to properly save some documents when the binary XML storage is used. In particular, when documents have attributes with long values (several thousands of characters), when retrieving the document, the value of some attributes is missing. For this reason, until this issue is solved by Oracle, we recommend you store XMLType values as "basic file", per the above DDL.

MySQL database setup

Supported MySQL versions

• [SINCE Orbeon Forms 2018.2]

  • MySQL 5.7 and MySQL 8: Since version 2018.2, Orbeon Forms uses the utf8mb4 character set instead of the utf8 character set. The reason being that MySQL's utf8 character set can only store UTF-8-encoded symbols that consist of 1 to 3 bytes, that is characters in the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane, which means that none of the characters in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane, which include Emojis, could stored. However, the switch to the utf8mb4 character set will prevent you from creating some indexes on MySQL 5.6 where default key prefix limit is 767 bytes. Hence we recommend you use MySQL 5.7, which raised the index key prefix length limit to 3072 bytes for InnoDB tables. If in your situation upgrading to MySQL 5.7 isn't an option, you can explore enabling the innodb_large_prefix configuration option on your MySQL 5.6, or changing the DDL that ships with Orbeon Forms to use utf8 instead of utf8mb4.

• [UP TO Orbeon Forms 2018.1]

  • Minimum version: The MySQL persistence layer relies on XML functions that have been introduced in MySQL 5.1, so you need to be using the MySQL 5.1 (which was released in November 2008) or newer.

  • Recommended versions: However, we recommend you use MySQL 5.6.4 or newer, as it supports storing fractional seconds.

  • MySQL 5.7: With MySQL 5.7, since Orbeon Forms 2016.2, you must set the sql_mode to ALLOW_INVALID_DATES, or you might get errors while creating the database schema.

Unicode support

By default, the MySQL JDBC driver uses the character encoding and character collation set on the server. Up to MySQL 5.7 (included), the default character encoding is latin1 and the default collation latin1_swedish_ci. Since MySQL 8, the default character encoding is utf8mb4 and the default collation utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci. So, if you're using MySQL 5.7 or earlier, you must specify the following 2 parameters when starting MySQL:

--character-set-server=utf8mb4
--collation-server=utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci

Setting up users and schema

1. Create a new user orbeon. Orbeon Forms will connect to MySQL as that user.

   mysql -u root
   mysql> CREATE USER 'orbeon'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'orbeon';

2. Create a new schema orbeon. This schema will contains the tables used to store your forms definitions and form data.

   mysql> CREATE schema orbeon;

3. If needed, grant permissions, for example:

   mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'orbeon'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;

4. Run the following DDL to create or update your Orbeon database, and note that if upgrading to 2016.2, you need to reindex your Orbeon database.

Orbeon Forms version(s)	DDL to create from scratch	DDL to upgrade from previous format
2024.1 and newer	mysql-2024_1.sql	mysql-2019_1-to-2024_1.sql
2022.1 to 2023.1	mysql-2019_1.sql	mysql-2018_2-to-2019_1.sql

For older DDL see Relational database schema.

SQL Server database setup

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.6]

Orbeon Forms relies on SQL Server's full-text search, which is included out-of-the-box in all SQL Server editions, except the Express and Express with Tools. If you're using one of those two editions of SQL Server, you might want to look into getting Express with Advanced Services.

Run the following DDL to create or update your Orbeon database, and note that if upgrading to 2016.2, you need to reindex your Orbeon database.

Orbeon Forms version(s)	DDL to create from scratch	DDL to upgrade from previous format
2024.1 and newer	sqlserver-2024_1.sql	sqlserver-2023_1-to-2024_1.sql
2023.1	sqlserver-2023_1.sql	sqlserver-2019_1-to-2023_1.sql
2022.1	sqlserver-2019_1.sql	sqlserver-2017_2-to-2019_1.sql

For older DDL see Relational database schema.

Using usql to create an orbeon database

You can create an orbeon database and run the DDL to create the tables and indices used by Orbeon Forms using the command-line tool usql. Follow these steps, making sure to replace PASSWORD with the password for the sa user and VERSION with your desired DDL version.

• usql mssql://sa:PASSWORD@localhost/

• CREATE DATABASE orbeon;

• \q

• usql mssql://sa:PASSWORD@localhost/orbeon

• \i sqlserver-VERSION.sql

Verifying indexes

After upgrading your database, we recommend verifying that you have all the latest indexes. Use the following SQL query to get a list of indexes in your database. You can then compare that list to the indexes defined in the latest DDL linked above.

SELECT 
    t.name AS TableName,
    i.name AS IndexName,
    i.type_desc AS IndexType,
    STRING_AGG(c.name, ', ') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY ic.key_ordinal) AS IndexColumns
FROM 
    sys.tables t
    INNER JOIN sys.indexes i ON t.object_id = i.object_id
    INNER JOIN sys.index_columns ic ON i.object_id = ic.object_id AND i.index_id = ic.index_id
    INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON ic.object_id = c.object_id AND ic.column_id = c.column_id
GROUP BY
    t.name, i.name, i.type_desc
ORDER BY 
    t.name, i.name;

PostgreSQL database setup

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.8]

Run the following DDL to create or update your Orbeon database, and note that if upgrading to 2016.2, you need to reindex your Orbeon database.

Orbeon Forms version(s)	DDL to create from scratch	DDL to upgrade from previous format
2024.1 and newer	postgresql-2024_1.sql	postgresql-2023_1-to-2024_1.sql
2023.1	postgresql-2023_1.sql	postgresql-2019_1-to-2023_1.sql
2022.1	postgresql-2019_1.sql	postgresql-2018_2-to-2019_1.sql

For older DDL see Relational database schema.

Db2 database setup

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.3]

Run the following DDL to create or update your Orbeon database, and note that if upgrading to 2016.2, you need to reindex your Orbeon database.

The DDL includes indices since Orbeon Forms 2024.1. Those indices typically cannot be added if the tables are created in the default tablespace, so the 2024.1 DDL includes the declaration for a new tablespace with 32K page size. No upgrade script is provided, as tables need to be moved or recreated in the new tablespace. You may use DB2's SYSPROC.ADMIN_MOVE_TABLE stored procedure to help with this migration.

Orbeon Forms version(s)	DDL to create from scratch	DDL to upgrade from previous format
2024.1 and newer	db2-2024_1.sql	See above
2022.1 to 2023.1	db2-2019_1.sql	db2-2017_2-to-2019_1.sql

For older DDL see Relational database schema.

Application server setup

Tomcat datasource configuration

When using Tomcat, you set up a JDBC data source for your database instance either:

• in server.xml (not recommended by the Tomcat documentation because it is less flexible)

• or in a separate context XML file (such as orbeon.xml) for the web app (recommended).

In both cases, you define a <Resource> element containing several configuration attributes. We provide examples below for all the databases covered.

Here is a typical example:

<Resource
    name="jdbc/mysql"
    driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"

    auth="Container"
    type="javax.sql.DataSource"

    initialSize="3"
    maxActive="10"
    maxIdle="10"
    maxWait="30000"

    poolPreparedStatements="true"

    testOnBorrow="true"
    validationQuery="select 1"

    username="orbeon"
    password="orbeon"
    url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/orbeon"/>

If you create a separate context file:

1. Give it the name of your web app, for example orbeon.xml.

2. Make sure the context is placed in the appropriate Tomcat folder.

Here is an example of a context file. Note the enclosing <Context> element:

<Context path="/orbeon">
    <Resource
        name="jdbc/mysql"
        driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
    
        auth="Container"
        type="javax.sql.DataSource"
    
        initialSize="3"
        maxActive="10"
        maxIdle="10"
        maxWait="30000"
    
        poolPreparedStatements="true"
    
        testOnBorrow="true"
        validationQuery="select 1"
    
        username="orbeon"
        password="orbeon"
        url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/orbeon"/>

</Context>

See also the following external links:

• Tomcat documentation: The Tomcat JDBC Connection Pool

• Apache Commons documentation: BasicDataSource Configuration Parameters

• Blog post: Configuring jdbc-pool for high-concurrency

Oracle application server setup

General

Assuming:

• ${HOST}: the host Oracle server is running on, for example oracle.acme.com

• ${PORT}: the port the Oracle server is running on, for example 1521

• ${INSTANCE}: the instance name, for example orcl

• ${USERNAME}: the user/schema, for example orbeon

• ${PASSWORD}: the password, for example password

Tomcat

Put the Oracle jar file that contains the JDBC driver (e.g. ojdbc6_g.jar, xdb.jar, and xmlparserv2.jar) in the appropriate directory for your application server (on Tomcat: common/lib or simply lib, depending on the version). If you don't already have it, you can download the Oracle JDBC driver from the Oracle site.

Your Resource element pointing to the your Oracle instance (see also Tomcat datasource configuration above). In the example below, the Oracle server is running on localhost, the instance name is globaldb, and the user/schema is orbeon with password orbeon. Those values are highlighted in the configuration below, and you'll most likely want to change them to fit your setup.

<Resource
    name="jdbc/oracle"
    driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"

    auth="Container"
    type="javax.sql.DataSource"

    initialSize="3"
    maxActive="10"
    maxIdle="10"
    maxWait="30000"

    poolPreparedStatements="true"

    testOnBorrow="true"
    validationQuery="select * from dual"

    username="orbeon"
    password="orbeon"
    url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@//localhost:1521/globaldb"/>

JBoss 5.0.1 / JBoss EAP 5.0.1

1. Please follow the JBoss documentation first, but here are some steps that work for us in our test environment.

2. Place ojdbc5_g.jar into server/default/lib/.

3. Create an Oracle datasource as server/default/deploy/oracle-ds.xml, for example:

   <datasources>
       <local-tx-datasource>
           <jndi-name>OracleDS</jndi-name>
           <connection-url>jdbc:oracle:thin:@//${HOST}:${PORT}/${INSTANCE}</connection-url>
           <driver-class>oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver</driver-class>
           <user-name>${USERNAME}</user-name>
           <password>${PASSWORD}</password>
           <valid-connection-checker-class-name>org.jboss.resource.adapter.jdbc.vendor.OracleValidConnectionChecker</valid-connection-checker-class-name>
           <metadata>
               <type-mapping>Oracle9i</type-mapping>
           </metadata>
       </local-tx-datasource>
   </datasources>

4. Update WEB-INF/jboss-web.xml to:

   <jboss-web>
       <resource-ref>
           <res-ref-name>jdbc/oracle</res-ref-name>
           <jndi-name>java:/OracleDS</jndi-name>
       </resource-ref>
   </jboss-web>

MySQL application server setup

1. Download the MySQL JDBC driver, called Connector/J, e.g. mysql-connector-java-5.1.39-bin.jar (latest version as of 2016-06-20)

2. Copy it in the appropriate directory for your application server (on Tomcat: common/lib or simply lib, depending on the version).

3. Setup a JDBC data source for your MySQL schema (see also Tomcat datasource configuration above). In the example below, the MySQL server is running on localhost port 3306, the schema is orbeon, the username/password is orbeon/orbeon. Those values are highlighted in the configuration below, and you'll most likely want to change them to fit your setup. Also, on the JDBC URL you're telling the MySQL driver to use Unicode and the UTF-8 encoding when talking to the database, which we highly recommend you to do in order to avoid encoding issues with non-ASCII characters.

   <Resource
       name="jdbc/mysql"
       driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
   
       auth="Container"
       type="javax.sql.DataSource"
   
       initialSize="3"
       maxActive="10"
       maxIdle="10"
       maxWait="30000"
   
       poolPreparedStatements="true"
   
       testOnBorrow="true"
       validationQuery="select 1"
   
       username="orbeon"
       password="orbeon"
       url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/orbeon?useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=UTF8"/>

SQL Server application server setup

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.6]

1. Download the Microsoft JDBC driver for SQL Server (as of 2020-05-04, this is version 8.2 of the driver)

2. Uncompress the zip file, and copy the sqljdbc4.jar it contains to the appropriate directory for your application server (on Tomcat: common/lib or simply lib with newer Tomcat version).

3. When using Java 11 or newer, you might need to add the JAXB API, which was present in earlier versions of Java. Download the JAR file from Maven and place it in the same directory you placed the JDBC driver.

4. Set up the JDBC data source for your SQL Server instance (see also Tomcat datasource configuration above). Example:

   <Resource
       name="jdbc/sqlserver"
       driverClassName="com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver"
   
       auth="Container"
       type="javax.sql.DataSource"
   
       initialSize="3"
       maxActive="10"
       maxIdle="10"
       maxWait="30000"
   
       poolPreparedStatements="true"
   
       validationQuery="select 1"
       testOnBorrow="true"
   
       username="orbeon"
       password="orbeon"
       url="jdbc:sqlserver://server;databaseName=orbeon;trustServerCertificate=true"/>

PostgreSQL application server setup

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.8]

1. Download the PostgreSQL JDBC driver.

2. Copy the driver jar to the appropriate directory for your application server (on Tomcat: common/lib or simply lib, depending on the version).

3. Setup the JDBC data source for your PostgreSQL instance (see also Tomcat datasource configuration above). Example:

   <Resource
       name="jdbc/postgresql"
       driverClassName="org.postgresql.Driver"
   
       auth="Container"
       type="javax.sql.DataSource"
   
       initialSize="3"
       maxActive="10"
       maxIdle="10"
       maxWait="30000"
   
       poolPreparedStatements="true"
   
       validationQuery="select 1"
       testOnBorrow="true"
   
       username="orbeon"
       password="orbeon"
       url="jdbc:postgresql://server:5432/database?useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=UTF8&amp;socketTimeout=30&amp;tcpKeepAlive=true"/>

   The following attributes of the datasource need to be configured as needed:

   • username

   • password

   • url: including the server and database parts of the path

DB2 application server setup

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 4.3]

1. Download the DB2 JDBC driver for the version of DB2 you're using.

2. Uncompress the zip file, and copy the db2jcc4.jar it contains to the appropriate directory for your application server (on Tomcat: common/lib or simply lib, depending on the version).

3. Setup the JDBC data source for your DB2 instance (see also Tomcat datasource configuration above). Example:

   <Resource
       name="jdbc/db2"
       driverClassName="com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver"
   
       auth="Container"
       type="javax.sql.DataSource"
   
       initialSize="3"
       maxActive="10"
       maxIdle="10"
       maxWait="30000"
   
       poolPreparedStatements="true"
   
       validationQuery="select 1 from sysibm.sysdummy1"
       testOnBorrow="true"
   
       username="db2inst1"
       password="password"
       url="jdbc:db2://localhost:50000/sample"/>

Orbeon Forms setup

What follows applies to Orbeon Forms 4.0 and newer. For Orbeon Forms 3.9, see this legacy documentation.

Disabling the embedded SQLite provider

[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2023.1]

Orbeon Forms comes with an embedded SQLite database in order to show demo forms, and also to allow to quickly get started with Orbeon Forms. When configuring your own provider or providers, you should disable the embedded SQLite database. To do so, add the following properties to your properties-local.xml, assuming here that your new persistence provider is called postgresql:

<property
    as="xs:boolean"
    name="oxf.fr.persistence.sqlite.active"
    value="false"/>
<property 
    as="xs:string"  
    name="oxf.fr.persistence.provider.orbeon.*.form"                     
    value="postgresql"/>
<property 
    as="xs:string"  
    name="oxf.fr.persistence.provider.orbeon-features.*.form"                     
    value="postgresql"/>

In addition, since by removing the SQLite demo database you don't have the Orbeon Forms demo forms anymore, you should remove the demo forms tiles from the Landing page. You can do this by setting the following property:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.fr.landing.cards"
    value="quick-links published-forms form-builder-forms"/>

With a single schema

In your properties-local.xml, you map an app / form / form type to the implementation of the persistence API you're using with the oxf.fr.persistence.provider.*.*.* wildcard property. For instance, if using PostgreSQL, set the property to:

<property
    as="xs:string"
    name="oxf.fr.persistence.provider.*.*.*"
    value="postgresql"/>

With multiple schemas

The single schema configuration described in the previous section uses the predefined oracle and mysql providers. To use multiple schemas you need to define you own provider names. For instance, assume that you have two apps, hr and finance, and would like both the form definition and data for those apps to be stored in two separate schemas:

1. In your application server configuration, you setup two data sources ; let's call them hr-datasource and finance-datasource.

2. In properties-local.xml, you use the following properties to define two providers hr and finance that you configure to use the desired persistence layer implementation (Oracle in this example) and data source:

   <!-- HR provider -->
   <property
       as="xs:anyURI"
       name="oxf.fr.persistence.hr.uri"
       value="/fr/service/oracle"/>
   <property
       as="xs:string"
       name="oxf.fr.persistence.hr.datasource"
       value="hr-datasource"/>
   
   <!-- Finance provider -->
   <property
       as="xs:anyURI"
       name="oxf.fr.persistence.finance.uri"
       value="/fr/service/oracle"/>
   <property
       as="xs:string"
       name="oxf.fr.persistence.finance.datasource"
       value="finance-datasource"/>

3. Still in properties-local.xml, you map the hr and finance app to the respective provider:

   <property
       as="xs:string"
       name="oxf.fr.persistence.provider.hr.*.*"
       value="hr"/>
   <property
       as="xs:string"
       name="oxf.fr.persistence.provider.finance.*.*"
       value="finance"/>

Flat view or table

Orbeon Forms stores form data as XML in relational databases, which gives it a lot of flexibility. However, it might be harder for other tools to access this XML data. For this reason, you might want to provide other tools a way to access the XML data through another "flat" table or view that has one column per form field.

Flat view support

See Flat View.

Manual relational table setup with MySQL

Orbeon Forms doesn't provide a way to have a table or view automatically created for a form upon publishing in MySQL. However, you can do this manually. For instance, assume you want to create a "flat" bookshelf table for the sample bookshelf form. You want that table to have 3 columns:

• title corresponds to the title form field;

• author corresponds to the author form field;

• document_id corresponds to the column with the same name in orbeon_form_data.

Start by creating the bookshelf table:

create table bookshelf (
    document_id varchar(255),
    title  text,
    author text
);

Choose an appropriate type for your columns, depending on the maximum length for the fields. Then create a trigger, which will update your bookshelf table when form data is saved in orbeon_form_data:

delimiter |
create trigger bookshelf_trigger before insert on orbeon_form_data for each row begin
    if new.app = 'orbeon' and new.form = 'bookshelf' then
        delete from bookshelf where document_id = new.document_id;
        if new.deleted = 'N' and new.draft = 'N' then
            insert into bookshelf set document_id = new.document_id,
                title = extractValue(new.xml, '/form/details/title'),
                author = extractValue(new.xml, '/form/details/author');
        end if;
    end if;
end;
|

Since you are interested in data for Bookshelf form, which is in the app orbeon form bookshelf, the trigger only does something if new.app = 'orbeon' and new.form = 'bookshelf'. To enable auditing, the MySQL persistence layer never deletes or updates data; it only inserts new row. So your trigger only needs to be concerned about updates. On insert, you want to make sure you are not creating duplicates in your bookshelf table, hence the delete statement. When a newly inserted row has delete = 'N', this indicates that a user deleted that document, in which case you don't want to insert a row in your bookshelf table, hence the if test.

Auditing

See Auditing.

See also

• Database support

• Relational database schema

• Auditing

• Revision history

• Purging historical data

• Purging old data using SQL

• Relational Database Logging

• Removing the built-in SQLite database