XForms/Comparison of XForms Products

Motivation

You want to compare XForms browser products and understand each systems strengths and weaknesses.

Method

We first identify key attributes of each product and justify why an attribute is relevant in a high-level comparison. We then present a table of the products with one column for each attribute.

Key Attributes of XForms Product

License

What type of license is being used? Common options are Commercial (with link), Apache 2.0, LGPL, GPL or other. The column should always provide a URL to the exact license.

Cost Per 10 or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 Users

What is the typical estimated costs for this product for between 10 and 10,000 users. Assume 10 medium-complexity forms used per person per day.

Client/Server/Both

Does the product convert the XForms code into browser-specific structures (HTML/JavaScript) on the client or the server?

Browsers Supported

What browsers are supported? Common items are All, C, F, I, O, S for Chrome, FireFox, IE, Opera and Safari.

XForms 1.1 Compatibility Tests

The W3C does provide a test suite for compatibility with the 1.1 specification. These test are rerun on a periodic basis.

Currently only a subset of products are being tested. The current test results are here

Version of XForms Supported

Options would be 1.0, 1.1

Status of XForms Compatibility Test

Did this product undergo a third party test of all of the features of XForms? If so, what percentage of the test pass. Provide a link to the test results.

Comparison Table

Client Side Applications

Product (Version)	License	Cost	Implementation	Architecture	Browsers	Test Results	Strength	Weakness	Notes
EMC/Documentum	Commercial	See Documentum	Google Web Toolkit	Client	All	EMC Results
Chiba (3.0.0b2)	liberal BSD and Apache 2	free	Client DOJO with DWR			96% Chiba Results
Ubiquity	Apache 2.0	free	JavaScript		All	Test Results		Not mature
Firefox Plugin	Open source	Free	Browser Plugin	Client	Firefox 3.5 and earlier only	[1]	Very compliant with standard	Firefox only, Limited Table Support, Limited Support, No Mac Version	Innovative Product, Ideal for quick prototyping, Fast form loads for forms that do not have long selection lists
Formfaces	Commercial		JScript and HTML - No plugin required	Client				Very slow load times for medium forms, No large user base	No updates to product since 2007
XSLTForms	LGPL	Free	XSLT Tranformation	Client or Server	All		Transform works on either server or client, Bundled with eXist and MarkLogic	Not yet mature	See XRX Wikibook
Picoforms	Commercial	See Picoforms	IE Plugin	Client	Internet Explorer Only		Ideal for internal forms for IE only sites	Support not clear, Required Admin rights to install Limited Community Support

Server-Side Applications

(No XForms elements are sent to the client)

Product (Version)	License	Cost	Implementation	Architecture	Browsers	Test Results	Strength	Weakness	Notes
XSLTForms	LGPL	Free	XSLT Tranformation	Client or Server	All		Bundled with eXist and MarkLogic	Not yet mature
Orbeon Forms	Open source	Free	Server-side transforms	Server	All		Very Mature, Many Extensions, Excellent Support, Active Community	Many examples require Orbeon Pipeline Language
BetterFORM	BSD, Apache 2	Free	Server-side transforms all written in Java	Server	All	Test Results	Very Mature, bundled with eXist, support for subforms, commercial support, active community, comes with graphical installer		successor of Chiba Project
IBM Lotus Forms	Commercial	See IBM	Server-side transform	Server	All		Full Implementation, Very Mature, IBM Supported	Price. Proprietary markup.