The Orbeon Forms Blog

The Form Runner wizard view is widely used by Orbeon Forms users: it presents a simple, navigable view of a form’s top-level sections, shown as separate pages. Until recently, the wizard view only supported free navigation. In this mode, you can freely navigate between pages, independently from whether there are... More

Today we released Orbeon Forms 4.8.1 PE. This update to Orbeon Forms 4.8 PE contains bug-fixes and is recommended for all Orbeon Forms 4.8 PE users. Specifically, this release addresses the following issues: Form Builder Incorrect label edited upon insert of XBL with nested labels (#2075) Form Runner Error when... More

Orbeon Forms often needs to perform calls to itself, for example to: call persistence layer implementations, load internationalized resources, navigate between pages, proxy requests for dynamic XForms resources, and request CSS, JavaScript and image assets when producing PDFs. In previous versions, Orbeon Forms performed actual HTTP connections on itself. This... More

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

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

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

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