Spotlight on... Troubleshooting performance issues in Sites

Troubleshooting performance issues can sometimes be difficult. Often they may involve many tiers (loadbalancer, web server, application server, database, ...) and many variables (caching, configuration, implementation, customization..). Often the first impression that there is a problem in the first place comes from subjective user experience or simple monitoring at the very front end, that is page loading times in the browser. But unless you know where in the stack the problem is, correcting it could be hit-and-miss. So the first step is understanding where the problem is coming from.

Specifically concerning performance issues in WebCenter Sites, there are a number of tools and techniques at our disposal. Some are provided by the JVM like thread dumping, some provided by Sites like specific loggers. But if you are lost and unsure how to begin then