The formcycle Server is a Java web application run on a Java web container or application server.

Contents

Software

Server

The following software is required for a formcycle Server.

• Oracle Java JDK or Open JDK in version 11 or 17
• Apache Tomcat version 9 in version 9.0.31 or higher
• Other applications server are possible, but are not officially supported.
• Please note any necessary configurations when operating the application server behind a load balancer, reverse proxy or similar (see here).

Important note about Tomcat 10:

Please note that Tomcat 10 is currently not compatible with formcycle and therefore cannot be used.

Tomcat 10 introduced changes to the Java web application specification that are currently incompatible with formcycle. We are planning to make the switch, but this would be a hard break. After the switch, customers will inevitably have to move from Tomcat 9 to Tomcat 10.

The designation "10" might give the impression that Tomcat 9 is outdated. In fact, both versions are being developed equally.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding during this transition period.

In Tomcat version 9.0.31, performance problems have been detected in combination with formcycle.

Older Java 11 releases contain a bug in the SSLEngine, which under certain circumstances can lead to dead loops when calling URLs via SSL, resulting in high CPU usage. This bug has been officially fixed in Java 11 release 11.0.8. Therefore it is not recommended to use Java 11 releases up to and including 11.0.7.

The following configurations are generally used for customer installations.

Windows (MS Windows Server 2019 Standard): Eclipse Temurin 17 (LTS), JVM HotSpot
Linux (Debian 11): OpenJDK 11
Application Server: Apache Tomcat 9

Database

One of the following database management systems must be installed.

• MySQL, version 8 or higher
• MS SQL, version 2016 SP3 or higher
• Oracle, Version 19 or higher
• PostgreSQL, version 11 or higher (
• MariaDB, version 10.4 or higher
• A case-sensitive UTF-8 collation, such as utf8_bin

The following configurations are generally used for customer installations.

Windows: MS SQL Server 2019 Standard Edition
Linux: MariaDB

Email server

formcycle must be able to send emails, e.g. to invite users to the system. For this purpose, an email server or an account on this server must be available via which the emails can be sent.

Browser (administration interface)

These requirements are for the administration interface of formcycle, not for opening and filling out forms. We recommend you use a recent version of one of the following browsers. Also, please keep in mind that older browsers may have security-related bugs.

• Microsoft Edge
• Mozilla Firefox (recommended)
• Google Chrome

Internet Explorer and previous versions of Edge are not supported anymore for the backend. Using them may lead to Ui glitches or other bugs.

Proxy server configurations (for WebSocket connections)

The formcycle configuration interface uses WebSocket connections in various places, especially in the form and workflow designer. In order to use the configuration interface on the master server, (reverse) proxy servers and load balancers, which are located between the user and the formcycle server, must therefore allow WebSocket connections. Further information on this can be found in the article Operation behind Reverse Proxy or similar.

Hardware

Hardware requirements may differ depending on how formcycle is used, such as how many forms have to be processed each day.

Consider the following requirement on the system:

• 1 client
• 40 forms
• 1000 form submissions daily
• 1000 state transitions daily 
• 500 files created by action, eg PDF or Word files
• 10 simultaneously registered users in the backend

This will require the following hardware and operating system:

• Windows 2019 (or newer) or Linux (64-bit)
• 2 x QuadCore processors @ 2,8 GHz
• 8 GB RAM for the machine running formcycle, of which 4 GB are used for the application server (Tomcat)
• 10 GB disc space for formcycle 

The specifications above do not include the database server. The database server may run on a different server.

The same hardware requirements generally apply to a frontend server in terms of processor, RAM and hard disk space.