The Orbeon Forms Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orbeon Forms 4.4 introduced the ability to connect Orbeon Forms to a remote server to publish, unpublish, and transfer form definitions back and forth. It is now possible to configure more than one server, for example a staging and a production server. You choose to which server to connect when... More

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.6.1 PE. This update to Orbeon Forms 4.6 PE contains bug-fixes and a couple of minor features. 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:... More

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.6! Major features and enhancements Lower memory usage for compiled forms. Orbeon Forms has a sophisticated system of caches, including for compiled form definitions. In previous versions, several compiled form definition were created for different modes of the same form (creation, edition, view, PDF, email, noscript). In... More