Implementing an application is only half of the journey. In today’s fast-moving digital landscape, you need your app to perform flawlessly, deliver consistently smooth user experiences, and scale seamlessly as business demands and user expectations increase. And this is especially true for Mendix applications, which often become integral to core operations.
As low code applications mature, they inevitably expand in scope and complexity and, over time, they might slow down, or encounter recurring bottlenecks, that impact scalability, maintainability, and user satisfaction across core business functions. This is where continuous optimization becomes vital to sustaining performance and ensuring they remain reliable drivers of digital operations.
A client of ours faced exactly these challenges when during critical business periods, system slowdowns and instability started impacting promotions, imports, and daily operations. Searches returned delays, large data imports overloaded servers, and certain queues and interfaces were draining system resources.
Fortunately, CLEVR was able to step in with expertise and structured diagnostics to restore stability and build confidence. As a trusted partner, our team ensured operations continued smoothly, downtime costs were minimized, and the user experience remained protected during periods of peak demand.
CLEVR’s Diagnostic Approach to Mendix Performance
In industries where reliability and speed are directly tied to revenue and customer satisfaction, a performance-first mindset is essential from day one. Recognizing this, our support team started immediately, initiating a Performance Diagnostics Scan to uncover underlying structural bottlenecks that could potentially cause the application to experience instability across critical operations.
Unlike routine monitoring or basic incident response, the Performance Diagnostics Scan provides a targeted, in-depth evaluation and is specifically designed to rapidly identify the top long-running actions, predict capacity needs, and provide clear recommendations for future optimization. This makes it particularly valuable during periods of high demand, as demonstrated in this specific retailer’s case.
“Designed with CLEVR’s deep expertise in low code support, the Performance Diagnostics Scan makes it fast and efficient to identify bottlenecks and enhance application performance,” says Richard Pluim, Team Lead Support at CLEVR. “This allows us to directly intervene at the most critical pain points that impact stability and growth.”
By leveraging log analysis, Mendix Cloud alert monitoring, performance tooling, and user behavior review, including manual tests in both development and acceptance environments, we were able to successfully replicate the issues and pinpoint their root causes.
Key Performance Bottlenecks Identified
Our diagnostics revealed several areas where the application was being stressed, particularly in search, data handling, and queue management. Rapid application growth combined with inadequate input handling and insufficient safeguards for heavy data processing made the system vulnerable to instability during periods of growth and peak demand.
More specifically, the team identified the following problems:
- Free Search functionality: attempted to fetch millions of articles due to unfiltered input (e.g., empty values or duplicate separators), causing unnecessary load and slowed down results.
- Large data imports: as increasing demand pushed more and more imports through the system, the lack of batching or limits created database overload and disk spikes above 75%, which resulted in timeouts.
- Low-performing queues: under heavy load, certain queues were draining system performance, primarily due to resource constraints and lack of optimization.
- Interfaces importing article data: certain services, like Article data imports, struggled with exceptionally large volumes, as they lacked mechanisms to process and validate input efficiently.
Targeted Optimization Solutions
Implementing the solutions required both precision and care. Even though troubleshooting was not without its challenges, some issues were intermittent and difficult to reproduce, with years of experience handling Mendix applications and an in-depth understanding of the client’s environment, our support team acted quickly and effectively to restore stability.
Restoring performance without disrupting the client’s live production environment was a top priority and as such, quick wins like urgent restarts were applied immediately to resolve critical issues, while fixes that required careful testing and scheduling around peak business periods were implemented later to ensure a holistic and lasting solution.
Overall, the solutions our team implemented were the following:
- Optimized search queries by filtering out empty values before execution.
- Introduced thresholds and batching for large imports, supported by monitoring dashboards to track duration.
- Applied server restarts and queue tuning to stabilize urgent issues.
- Suggested future-proofing strategies to handle high data loads more efficiently.
Measurable Results and Business Impact
The implementation process was carried out in close collaboration with the client’s internal team. Open communication, regular check-ins, and alignment on priorities ensured the solutions were delivered smoothly, and with minimal disruption to ongoing operations.
This collaborative approach allowed both teams to work towards a shared goal of restoring stability and enhancing user confidence by delivering on key measurable results:
- Search performance became fast and stable, even for long EAN lists.
- System stability improved with far fewer timeouts and Mendix Cloud alerts.
- End users experienced smoother workflows, especially during promotions and imports.
“Performance improved dramatically. From being one of the slowest applications in the chain, it became one of the fastest, causing performance gaps in other applications to become visible, continues Richard. “This is how strategic performance optimization can drive efficiency across the entire application landscape.”
Future Stability with CLEVR Mendix Support
After implementation, our team made sure to embed a proactive monitoring approach so that any potential issues could be tracked and addressed before they impact operations. Thanks to this, performance has remained stable with no recurrence of the issues previously identified, even during high-load periods.
This case highlights the importance of having a tailored Mendix support partner that can deliver immediate, measurable improvements without lengthy projects or downtime. By combining diagnostics, communication, and fast fixes, CLEVR enabled this leading retailer to stabilize their business-critical applications and build long-term resilience.
With over 190 satisfied customers and a 96% first-time-right score, CLEVR’s support services provide industry-specific expertise and advanced technology that empower companies across sectors to scale with confidence and remain future-ready.
Whatever your challenge, CLEVR’s Expert Support Services team is here to help you maintain operational excellence.
Contact us for a free Performance Diagnostics Scan.
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