XForms with JSF, is it a reasonable solution?

We are creating a business process management solution, which involves creating forms to be used by the process. At the moment we create the forms using xhtml, which is part of a component with a backing bean. I've been asked to investigate to use xforms to design the forms, so that the forms could be created using openoffice.

Openoffice Xforms Designer

In a preliminary investigation, it doesn't seem that openoffice has a way to export in xform format only. I could open the zip of document containing the form, and I could find some tags that ressemble xforms tags, but mixed with a lot of other stuff.

So my first question would be if openoffice would be a viable tool to create the xforms, and how to save them in xml format.

Xforms-Xforms Integra开发者_C百科tion

My second question would be how to interface JSF with XForms. As far as I could see in my investigation, most of xform tools nowadays are based in javascript. Is there some existing api/tool to connect xforms with JSF?

Alternative Xhtml Designer

An alternative solution would be to use a xhtml based form designer, would anyone suggest one that would be simple and easy to use? I thought using jboss tools for designing xhtml, but it isnt too friendly for non techies.

thanks

OpenOffice — I have no personal experience with OpenOffice, but so far have seen a few people who have tried to use the "XForms" produced by OpenOffice outside of OpenOffice, and don't remember seeing anyone getting a lot of success out of it.

JSF — XForms and JSF have a few points in common: they both provide state-full components (called controls in XForms), and if you combine XForms with XBL, you also get the ability to define your own components. Maybe for this reason, I rarely see JSF and XForms being used together. The question is: what type of integration are you looking for? In general XForms integrates through the use of REST/web services. So you typically integrate XForms with another backend technology, and much more rarely with another front-end technology.

Designer — Like @ebruchez, I'd recommend you have a look at Form Builder, which is part of the open source Orbeon Forms. But I'll have to attach the same disclaimer: I do development on Orbeon Forms, and thus my opinion might be biased ;).