Installation
Orbeon Forms runs on any platform that supports:
- A Java runtime
Orbeon Forms Version | Java Versions | Comment |
|---|---|---|
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 |
We recommend you run Orbeon Forms on a dedicated server or instance that satisfies the following requirements:
- CPU: recent 4-core, or more, Intel Xeon or Core i7 or newer. We don't recommend AMD CPUs prior to the Ryzen line.
- RAM: 4 GB of RAM, or more, available to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM heap size).
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 PE subscription per server or instance.
Configure the Java VM with:
-Xmxoption 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:MaxPermSizefor "permgen" space:- use at least:
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m
Also, make sure that you do not have tiered compilation when using Java 7. See A dangerous Java 7 JVM option: TieredCompilation.
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.
Out-of-the-box, forms you create with Form Builder, as well as data captured with those forms, will be saved in an embedded database called eXist. You can setup Orbeon Forms so this data gets stored in your relational database, but if you're getting started with Orbeon Forms, you might to just use the embedded eXist, even if just temporarily.
Note that eXist will need to be able to write to the
WEB-INF/exist-data directory, wherever Orbeon Forms .war file is uncompressed. So, especially if you're on UNIX, make sure that this directory is writable by the process running your app server.- 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:
WEB-INF/resources/config/license.xml
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/license.xml
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._[SINCE Orbeon Forms 2023.1]
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.
If you plan to use Field-level encryption, also set
oxf.fr.field-encryption.password. See Field-level encryption configuration for details.If you plan to use Access tokens, also set
oxf.fr.access-token.password. See Access tokens configuration for details.This step is sometimes optional.
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 oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri configuration property in your
properties-local.xml file.Often, it is enough to set it to the following (adjusting for port and prefix):
<property
as="xs:anyURI"
name="oxf.url-rewriting.service.base-uri"
value="http://localhost:8080/orbeon"/>
Last modified 5mo ago