Installation
Last updated
Last updated
Orbeon Forms runs on any platform that supports:
A Java runtime
a Servlet 2.5 (or greater) container such as . For versions supported, see .
2024.1
11, 17, 21
2023.1
11, 17, 21
2022.1
11, 17
2021.1
11
2020.1
8, 11
2019.2
8, 10, 11
2019.1
8, 10, 11
2018.2
8, 10
recommended
2018.2
7
not recommended
Up to 2018.1
8
recommended
Up to 2018.1
7
not recommended
Orbeon Forms supports both the Java Servlet and Jakarta Servlet APIs, without any extra configuration, which means that the same orbeon.war file can be deployed in Tomcat 9, Tomcat 10, WildFly 26, or WildFly 27+, for example.
To support both of those APIs, the various Orbeon servlet, filters, and listeners are now dynamically instantiated instead of being referenced in web.xml. If you need to disable that dynamic instantiation mechanism, you can remove the servlet-container-initializer.jar file from the WEB-INF/lib directory of the orbeon.war file.
We recommend you run Orbeon Forms on a dedicated server or instance that satisfies the following requirements:
RAM: 4 GB of RAM, or more, available to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM heap size).
Configure the Java VM with:
-Xmx option for dedicated Java heap memory:
on a development machine: at least 1 GB of Java heap: -Xmx1g
on a production machine: at least 4 GB of Java heap: -Xmx4g
Java 1.7 only (Orbeon Forms 2018.2 and earlier only): -XX:MaxPermSize for "permgen" space:
use at least: -XX:MaxPermSize=256m
NOTE: On Unix systems, GIJ / GCG is not supported as there are reports of issues with that runtime environment and Orbeon Forms. Instead, we recommend you use the Oracle runtime Java environment.
Note that the SQLite demo database is stored in WEB-INF/orbeon-demo.sqlite, located where the Orbeon Forms' .war file is uncompressed. Be aware that updating the WAR file might overwrite the demo database, resulting in the loss of any saved data.
To disable the sqlite embedded database and demo forms, add the following property:
If you are running Orbeon Forms CE, you don't need to install a license file.
If you are running Orbeon Forms PE:
complete the steps for your application server below
before starting your servlet container, copy your license file under the Orbeon Forms WAR file as:
With Orbeon Forms 4.1 and newer, you can also place license.xml file under the user's home directory. For example, on Unix systems:
Orbeon Forms first searches for the license file within the WAR, and if not found attempts to find it under the home directory.
The benefit of this approach is that you don't have to find where the WAR file is deployed in your container, or to uncompress and recompress the WAR file with the license.
NOTE: Orbeon Forms uses Java's System.getProperty("user.home") to identify the user's home directory. This corresponds to the user running the servlet container and not necessarily to the user of the developer or system administrator.
Orbeon Forms will cause an error when starting if the default value for oxf.crypto.password is used. This is to prevent you from using the default value in production.
In addition, a password strength checker will also cause an error if the password is too weak. Ideally, use a randomly-generated strong password.
This step is sometimes optional.
Often, it is enough to set it to the following (adjusting for port and prefix):
See .
CPU: recent 4-core, or more, Intel Xeon or Core i7 or newer. We don't recommend AMD CPUs prior to the line.
If using AWS EC2, we recommend you start with a c4.2xlarge instance. For most projects, it is safe to start with a configuration along those lines, but you might want to have more powerful or multiple servers or instances (or equivalent) for situations calling for high availability, or to handle more load. When running Orbeon Forms PE on multiple servers or instances, you need one per server or instance.
For more details on sizing, see the section on .
Also, make sure that you do not have tiered compilation when using Java 7. See .
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. For more information, see . A warning banner will display as a reminder to make this change.
See also .
you can obtain a full licence from Orbeon, or get a
You must create a default properties-local.xml file. See .
In addition, you must set the property to something different from the default.
If you plan to use , also set oxf.fr.field-encryption.password. See for details.
If you plan to use , also set oxf.fr.access-token.password. See for details.
Depending on your setup, if things don't work out of the box (for example if you have database errors with the sample forms) you might have to set the configuration property in your properties-local.xml file.
For more information about how to set configuration properties, see .
This step is optional. See .