Deploying Orbeon

Orbeon is a the XForms processor that handles all of the back end editing and publication. Additionally, with the XML Pipeline Language (XPL), it handles the public user interface, interacting with Apache Solr and eXist, and the Nomisma SPARQL endpoint and APIs to bind a variety web services together into a cohesive framework.

Download the latest free, open source Orbeon Community Edition (CE) zip file. Within the root folder in this zip file, you'll find orbeon.war. Extract orbeon.war and place in the Tomcat webapps folder.

$TOMCAT_HOME = /var/lib/tomcat7 or /var/lib/tomcat8

Several minor configurations need to be applied to Orbeon.

• Allow symlinks within the Orbeon webapp directory structure:

  • Create orbeon.xml in $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost
  • In Tomcat 7: Insert the following XML fragment (substituting ”/var/lib/tomcat7” with $TOMCAT_HOME if necessary): <Context path="/orbeon" docBase="/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/orbeon" allowLinking="true"/>
  • In Tomcat 8: The format for the Context has changed slightly: <Context path="/orbeon" docBase="/var/lib/tomcat8/webapps/orbeon"> <Resources allowLinking="true" /> </Context>
  • Save the file.

• Set the plain theme:

  • Edit $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/orbeon/WEB-INF/resources/config/properties-local.xml.template, insert within <properties>: <property as="xs:anyURI" name="oxf.epilogue.theme" value="oxf:/config/theme-plain.xsl"/>
  • Save file. Rename properties-local.xml.template to properties-local.xml.

Logging

Logging is controlled by log4j.xml. See XForms Logging for more information. Note: You'll probably need to change the log paths from relative to absolute. The default Tomcat log directory is /var/log/tomcat7 or /var/log/tomcat8

Finally, restart Tomcat for these changes to take effect: sudo service tomcat7 restart