The Orbeon Forms Blog

This is the Orbeon Forms blog. Stay up to date with the latest releases and new features of Orbeon Forms!

Choosing the best versioning option when publishing a form

Orbeon Forms supports versioning of form definitions since Orbeon Forms 4.5 [1]. Since Orbeon Forms 4.6 [2], Form Builder also allows you to control whether a new form definition version must be created: Creating a new version Or whether the last existing form definition version must be overwritten: Overwriting an... More

Orbeon Forms 4.8

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.8! Major features and enhancements PostgreSQL support. Thanks in good part to an external contribution, Orbeon Forms supports PostgreSQL in addition to Oracle, MySQL, SQLServer, DB2 and eXist. (blog, #1941) Better management of server resources. Under load, Orbeon Forms limits the number of concurrent form processing requests... More

Orbeon Forms 4.7.1

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.7.1 PE. This update to Orbeon Forms 4.7 PE contains bug-fixes, security fixes, performance improvements, and localization improvements. We recommend this update for all Orbeon Forms 4.7 PE users. Specifically, this release addresses the following issues: Form Builder Renaming an action duplicates it (#1913) FB... More

PostgreSQL support in Orbeon Forms

According to the DB-Engines database ranking by popularity, the top 5 relational databases are: Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and DB2. In 4.6 we added support for SQL Server. The upcoming 4.8 adds support for PostgreSQL, thus completing Orbeon Forms support for the top-5 relational databases. Past the top-5, we... More

Orbeon Forms 4.7

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.7! Major features and enhancements Server-side embedding API. Orbeon Forms 4.7 introduces a new way to integrate forms within Java (and other Java Virtual Machine-based languages) applications: server-side embedding. (doc, blog) Internal service requests. Orbeon Forms often needs to perform requests to itself, such as calling its... More

Internationalization in actions used to populate selection controls

When you create a form in Form Builder, if you have selection controls (dropdowns, checkboxes, radio buttons, lists, and the like), in most cases you know in advance what choices you want to offer your users. For instance, this is the case if you have a field allowing users to... More

Control required values with formulas in Orbeon Forms 4.7

Up to Orbeon Forms 4.6, Form Builder only lets you determine whether a field is required or not once and for all, by saying “Yes” or “No. With the upcoming Orbeon Forms 4.7, you can also choose to use a formula, which means that the choice can be dynamic: for... More

Embedding support in Orbeon Forms 4.7

So far there have been a couple of ways to integrate Orbeon Forms with existing applications: Side by side: linking or posting data from other applications to Orbeon Forms pages, and linking or posting data from Orbeon Forms to other applications. Embedded in a portal: using the full portlet or... More

Fail to handle the session properly, and make your site useless

I was recently on vacation abroad. Just before taking the flight back home, I embarked on the mundane task of doing the online check-in for my return flight. The process started nicely, on what looked like a modern and well designed site; it was obvious that a lot of care... More

Orbeon Forms 4.6.2

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.6.2 PE. This update to Orbeon Forms 4.6.1 PE contains bug-fixes and localization improvements. We recommend this update for all Orbeon Forms 4.6 PE users. For more details about the 4.6 release in general, see Orbeon Forms 4.6. This release includes the following bug fixes: Form... More