Installation
Software requirements
Basic requirements
Orbeon Forms runs on any platform that supports:
A Java runtime
a Servlet 2.5 (or greater) container such as Apache Tomcat. For versions supported, see Tomcat.
Java versions
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
Tomcat versions
See Tomcat.
Java Servlet and Jakarta Servlet APIs
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.
Hardware requirements
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.
For more details on sizing, see the section on how much load Orbeon Forms can handle.
Java virtual machine configuration
Configure the Java VM with:
-Xmxoption for dedicated Java heap memory:on a development machine: at least 1 GB of Java heap:
-Xmx1gon 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.
Database setup
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 Relational Database. A warning banner will display as a reminder to make this change.
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:
See also Removing the built-in SQLite database.
License installation (Orbeon Forms PE only)
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
you can obtain a full licence from Orbeon, or get a trial license
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._
Configuration properties
You must create a default properties-local.xml file. See Properties.
In addition, you must set the oxf.crypto.password property to something different from the default.
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.
Base URL for internal services
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):
For more information about how to set configuration properties, see Configuration Properties.
Logging configuration
This step is optional. See Logging.
Specific steps for your container / app server
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