Performance Tuning, Deployment, and Troubleshooting
Performance
Bottlenecks concentrate in Document Services (rendering, conversion), large form data, FDM calls to slow backends, and workflow persistence. Tuning levers include thread pool sizing for Document Services, caching, watched-folder batching, dispatcher caching for static assets, and avoiding oversized payloads. Know that Output rendering and PDF Generator conversion are CPU- and memory-heavy.
Deployment
Forms artifacts (forms, FDMs, fragments, workflow models) are content packages deployed via Package Manager or pipelines. Configuration is deployed via OSGi configs and repo init. Version alignment between the Forms add-on and AEM service pack is a deployment prerequisite.
Troubleshooting method
Reproduce, isolate the layer (authoring, runtime, service, backend), then check logs and configuration. Common signatures: unsatisfied OSGi components, missing native binaries, font errors, DDX failures, and FDM authentication errors.
Traps
- Blaming code when the issue is configuration or missing binaries.
- Deploying content without matching OSGi configuration.
- Ignoring thread pool exhaustion under load.
Rule of thumb
Triage by layer: if it fails only on Publish, suspect configuration/binaries; if only under load, suspect pools and memory; if only for some users, suspect ACLs or data.