TIBCO Overview

This reorganizes TIBCO buzzwords and concepts without the sales fluff in a way that's usable for people actually working with the stuff.

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TIBCO Products

TIBCO is a leader offering products and services in the EAI (Enterprise Architecture Integration) market, particularly Message-Oriented-Middleware (MOM).

The brilliance of TIBCO is in its adapters, which enable database-centric applications to become message-oriented participants in the new flexible SOA world where a wide variety of applications all work together by passing various types of messages to each other through a common "Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)". This approach is the basis for the company's name, an acronymn for The Information Bus company, pronounced "tib-co".

TIBCO offers a range of products to perform messaging:

BusinessWorks to design and deploy integration of applications through adapters that interact through a common ESB (Enterprise Service Bus).

Rendezvous (RV) rvrd which offers a more robust Java Messaging Service (across subnets) than Sun's JMS.

TIBCO SmartSockets RTservers ???

Enterprise Message Service (EMS) 4 lets application programs send and receive messages using the Java Message Service (JMS) protocol. It also supports WSMF (Web Services Management Framework) for two-way communication with Enterprise Management Systems such as HP Openview. It competes with FioranoMQ 2007, Sonic MQ 7.0, and ActiveMQ 4.1.0.

TIBCO Enterprise Management Advisor (EMA) extends TIBCO Administrator to automatically react to the availability of enterprise resources such as databases, application servers, etc.

Hawk provides an RV-based framework for TIBCO monitoring mechanisms, which include the TIBCO Administrator. A Hawk agent is installed on each machine monitored.

TIBCO Turbo XML, XML development and management suite:
- XML Authority� for DTD and schema creation, editing and re-use.
- XML Instance� for XML document creation, editing and re-use
- XML Console� for XML file batch processing and exporting/importing to and from
XML Canon which uses a database to version XML documents.

iProcess Modeler 10 for BPM (Business Process Management) (formerly Staffware before its acquisition in 2004) uses Business Process Diagrams created by TIBCO's Business Studio 2.0 product which supports the BPMN 1.0 (Business Process Management Notation) standard adopted by OMG on Feb. 2006.

Spotfire, acquired May 2007 as TIBCO's Business Intelligence analytics offering.

General Interface, an AJAX (Asychronous Javascript and XML) framework that enables messaging among Javascript functions through a "PageBus".

TIBCO offers adapters to connect with various applications, databases, and network technologies.

Business Optimization (BO) ???

TIBCO competes in the SOA market against a pantheon of giants and nimble start-ups:

IBM MQSeries/WebSphere,
Sun's JCAPS (from acquisition of SeeBeyond by Sun)
Progress Software's Sonic ESB
Oracle SOA Suite (from acquisition of Collaxa in 2005),
WebMethods Fabric (acquired by Software AG),
BEA's Aqualogic (from acquisition of Fuego),
Cordys,
Microsoft's WCF (Windows Communication Foundation),
Apache open source WsO2.
TIBCO's Developer Community board is entered from power.tibco.com. Permissions are needed for the BusinessWorks forum from support.
tibco-l Technical & Functional EAI Group at ITToolBox has a wiki Q&A
JBoss Messaging
JMS
EAI Patterns

TIBCO Corporation

The company was acquired by London-listed financial information group Reuters in 1994, who then spun it out to list on Nasdaq in 1999 under symbol TIBX on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The company was founded in 1985 by Vivek Ranadiv�, who is still its Chairman and CEO. He wrote New York Times business bestseller The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-time Technology (McGraw-Hill, 1999), a ("business-focused") treatise on the use of publish-subscribe technology to support event-driven real-time applications.

The company is based in California's silicon valley (3303 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 Phone: 650.846-1000)

The company's last conference, TUCON2007, was held June, 2007 in San Francisco. The next one is ???

Tom Laffey - EVP of Products and Technology
Matt Quinn - VP Product Management

Webinars

Product and Service Pricing

TIBCO uses a 3 year subscription model.

TIBCO is one of the most complete EAI platforms, and charges accordingly.

Because of its complexity and annoying quirks, TIBCO people are difficult to find and relatively expensive.

Certification Exams on TIBCO

“If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” —Revelation 20:15 (NIV)

Here is a compact comparison of TIBCO Certifications

Acronymn TIBCO Certified ... ID $USD Questions Duration Pass%

TCSA SOA Architect TB0-109 $250 46 1 hour 30 minutes 67%

TCP Professional for TIBCO BusinessWorks 5 TB0-107 $250 59 1 hour 15 minutes 62%

TCP Professional for TIBCO Rendezvous 7 TB0-106 $250 55 1 hour 15 minutes 61%

TCP Professional for TIBCO Enterprise Message Service 4 TB0-104 $250 55 1 hour 15 minutes 67%

TCP Professional for TIBCO iProcess Modeler 10 TB0-108 $250 55 1 hour 15 minutes 70%

The Pass% column lists the percentage required to pass the exam.

Thomas Erl of SOA Systems, SOA Magazine, and SOA Training wrote a Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series of books:

SOA Design Patterns (Hardcover - April 11, 2008)

SOA Principles of Service Design (Hardcover - Jul 18, 2007)

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design, (Hardcover - Aug 2, 2005)

Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services, (Paperback - April 16, 2004)

Web Services Platform Architecture: SOAP, WSDL, WS-Policy, WS-Addressing, WS-BPEL, WS-Reliable Messaging, and More, () by Sanjiva Weerawarana, Francisco Curbera, Frank Leymann, Tony Storey, and Donald F. Ferguson

TIBCO Executable Components

Component Executable Path ps id Config.

BW Administrator /home/tibco/tibco/tra/domain/domain tibcoadmin tibcoadmin.conf

BW Designer C:\Tibco\designer\5.4\bin\ designer.exe -

LDAP - - \tibco\tra\domain\domain\
AuthorizationDomain.properties

TRA Domain Utility /home/tibco/tibco/tra/5.4/bin domainutility
domainutilitycmd domainutility.tra

TIBCO Hawk /tibco/tra/domain/domain hawkagent -

EMS Server Console /opt/tibco/ems/bin/ tibemsadmin -

EMS Agent /opt/tibco/ems/bin/ tibemsd -

Rendezvous agent - rva -

Rendezvous daemon - rvd -

Remote untrusted Java applets and other client applications connect and communite with the Rendezvous agent (rva) which in turn connects to the Rendezvous daemon (rvd).

TIBCO Architecture

TIBCO Components TIBCO uses industry-standard protocols and formats to provide the underlying "plumbing" that connects disparate 3rd party vendors

TRA (TIBCO Run-time Agent)

TIBCO Runtime Agent (TRA)

What is the difference between a service, a process, and an instance ???

Agents (services) include process instances and adapter instances.

The TRA executes TIBCO scripts, sends alerts, and performs message recovery.

TRAs must to be installed and initiated before TIBCO BusinessWorks process engine(s) which send commands to them (during run-time) to process activities (units of work).

TIBCO uses "Adapters" to interact with application services by listening for and receives messages.

Adapter and process logic (plus deployment configuration options) are specified in an enterprise archive (EAR) project file created using the TIBCO Designer GUI.

TIBCO Admin. Server

TIBCO Administrator

Administrator GUI

The server's Application Management duties also include monitoring the CPU and disk space used by apps and starting and stopping apps.

The server's Resource Mangement duties include sending Alerts when process or disk usage exceeds thresholds.

The server's User Mangement duties include authenticating users and connecting them by role to ACLs (Access Control Lists), plus runtime security for deployed applications.

Domains

process engines

The Domain Utility is used to create domains and to join a cluster of logical machines to an administration domain. This is done by executing \tibco\tra\5.4\template\domainutility\cmdline\CreateDomain.xml

Each administration domain can have a master (primary) and a secondary server.

External web services are outside admin domains.

TIBCO Designer Walthrough

TIBCO Siebel Adapter Publisher Config Projects are created within the TIBCO Designer graphical user interface (GUI) application.

Name a project using your system's application initials.

When a new project is created in local mode, it is stored in default folder C:\Tibco\designer\5.4\... containing file vcrepo.dat and folders AESchemas and defaultVars.

The "Global Variables" vertical tab displays files with a .substvar file extension within the defaultVars folder.

Create file folders to separate assets needed at different points during the development cycle: Build, Deploy, MyApp (custom processes), Utilities already coded for use by all apps.

Within the Palette panel (on the lower left):
click (with a mouse) on "General".

To avoid scrolling, click the Switch Palette Mode button on the menu bar or press Ctrl-M on the keyboard. If you have memorized what the icons stand for, set Palette Options Hide Labels.

Drag and drop the "Folder" resource icon onto the Design panel (on the upper right).

Within the Configuration panel (on the lower right) displying information (properties) for the selected resource, change the name.

Pull down Resources > Add Resources > "XML Tools" and select "Instance". Change the name of the Instance to "build".

Close the project and notice (within Windows Explorer opened to your project folder) that internally, these user actions cause (xml, jar, or schema) files to be created in the project folder. Reopen the project again.

The View menu item controls the designer panel on the upper right. I usually stay with the "Details" view because it has the most information. When selected, the upper right panel provides UP and DOWN arrows to rearrange the order of the fields.

"AESchemas" (a default library) is automatically included in the project tree and thus also appears in the design panel.

Process Definitions, SharedConnections, SharedResources will also appear in the tree.

TIBCO Processes

A process is defined by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) as:

The representation of a business process in a form that supports automated manipulation, such as modeling, or enactment by a workflow [or business] management system. The process definition consists of a network of activities and their relationships, criteria to indicate the start and termination of the process, and information about the individual activities, such as participants, associated IT applications, and data, etc.

Each service is defined with a process flow. Workflows are represented by transition lines sequencing activities (represented by icons) performed by "resources" listed in the Designer Palette tab.

A BusinessWorks process definition (below) is classified as a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) showing transitions to activities. It's not cyclic (acyclic) because transitions to a previously visited activity is not possible. In other words, it's not like a regular programming language.

TIBCO BusinessWorks GUI TIBCO's Designer GUI define process and heirarchy models using TIBCO's own symbol icons, not UML notation or BPML (Business Process Modeling Language) symbols (an industry-standard supported by TIBCO's Business Studio product). TIBCO Designer does not import or export BPEL (Business Process Exchange Language) files with other competing workflow design products.

Process definition files are named with a ".par" file suffix.

Service definition files are named with a ".arr" file suffix.

Being event-driven, developers have no control over the order of transitions ???

Standard XPath expression syntax is used to define conditional mapping of process data to input.

Standard Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) coding is used internally to represent the input schema for an activity. But TIBCO doesn't make it easy to see. To see the actual code, right-click on a node in the input schema and from the popup menu click copy (to the clipboard). Then open a blank text document and Paste the XSLT code.

Runtime variables and monitoring and Checkpointing behavior ... Shared variables to count the number of times a process has been repeated.

For more information, see the TIBCO Designer User's Guide

Templates

Organizations use templates to standardize applications design across the enterprise.

When "Select a Template" is chosen, the default folder is a ".TIBCO/templates" folder within the Documents and Settings folder for the user.

Use folders to group (organize) services used by an application function:

BusinessServices
DataServices
UtilityServices

The LibraryBuilder resource creates shareable resource files for design-time use by others.

Colors, such as "-16777216" and "-6684673"

Adapters

Deploying an adapter includes importing an EAR file, assigning adapter services to the machines in the administration domain, and specifying startup options for each process engine and adapter service. Monitoring options (stored as Hawk rulebases) also need to be specified for each machine. There is a separate Log file setting for each adapter instance.

An Adapter client service acts as a client in a request-response interaction.

An Adapter server service acts as a server in a request-response interaction.

In the example below:

A TIBCO Publication (Notification) service adapter is used to publish (send out) information, such as the "Sbl_Publish"
("Publish to Adapter" activity).

TIBCO BusinessWorks provides the following activities for use with adapters:

1 Publish to Adapter � Publishes data from the process to an adapter, which subscribes to data coming from the process and passes the data to the target application.

2 Adapter Subscriber � Subscribes to incoming data published by the adapter.

3 Invoke an Adapter Request - Response Service�Communicates (as a client) with an adapter request-response service.

4 Adapter Request - Response Server`�`Starts a process based on the receipt of a request from an adapter.

5 Respond to Adapter Request�Sends a response to an adapter for a previously received request.

6 Wait for Adapter Message � Waits for the receipt of a message from the publication service of the specified adapter.

7 Wait for Adapter Request � Waits for the receipt of a request from a request-response invocation service.

3rd party applications services supported by TIBCO include:

SAP R/3

PeopleSoft

Siebel

Oracle Apps

Lotus Notes

i2

BroadVision

Clarify

Vantive

JD Edwards

Arbor/BP

CICS

AS/400 Files

os390 Files

z/os Files

Sample RV Control for BEA Weblogic 8.1 includes a TIBCO RV event generator application (TibRVEG.ear).

3rd party application services (listed at the right) interact with TIBCO through a publish/subscribe mechanism.

If the palette cannot directly communicate with a vendor app to obtain metadata, a Design-Time Adapter (DTA) can be used to make use of vendor client libraries to communicate with that vendor app.

The process starter "Receive" resource is accessed via a "JMS Queue Receiver" activity.

The "ShippingSchedule" resource is accessed via a "SOAP Request Reploy" activity. It retrieves information about the shipping schedule from the Shipping web site and adds shipping info. to the order.

If it can't enter the order into the Siebel system right away of if shipping is delayed, it sends an email to the customer.

A "start" activity is called explicitly from another process.

Complex business processes are structure with a main process and several subprocesses. This makes processes easier to understand and debug, and reuse.

Other adapters include:

TIBCO Adapter for ActiveDatabase
TIBCO Adapter for Files

Palettes of Activities for each Resource

Resources are grouped with palettes (Activities, Adapters, General, Other), listed in alpha order as in the Palette menu, but with categories as shown in the Palette Browser:

In the "?" column below: A "x" indicates that the item appears in the Palette menu. A "-" indicates that the item DOES NOT appear in the Palette menu.

Category ? Palette Activity

Adapters - ActiveDatabase Adapter ActiveDatabaseAdapterConfiguration, ADBServer, ADBPublisher, ADBSubscriber

Activities x Active Enterprise (AE) Adapter [activities that publish messages to a specified adapter or invoke an operation by way of an adapter]

Adapters x Adapter Resources Generic Transaction Control Pool, PublicationService, Adapter Archive, MessageFilter, Log Sink Role, RequestResponseService, SubscriptionService, GenericAdapterConfiguration, GenericSession, Timer, RequestResponseInvocationService, Subscriber, Generic Log Sink, Client, Publisher, Advisory, Server, LoadURL

Adapters - Adapter Schemas Generic Scalar, AESchema, Generic Union, Generic Sequence, Operation, Generic Class, Association

Activities x BusinessEvents Activities Wait for Event, Send Event, Receive Event

Other - BusinessEvents State Modeler Composite, Concurrent, CallStateMachine, End, StateMachine, Sample

General - BusinessEvents Workbench RuleFunction, RuleSet, ScoreCard, NewTimeEvent, BusinessEvents Archive, Rule, Destination, NewConcept, ConceptView, NewsEvent, Channel

Activities x FTP FTP Rename File, FTP SYS Type, FTP Dir, FTP Make Remote Directory, FTP Get Default Directory, FTP Remove Remote Directory, FTP Put, , FTP Get, FTP Delete File, FTP Connection, FTP Change Default Directory, FTP Quote

Activities - File Rename File, Create File, List Files, Copy File, Read File, Wait for File Change, File Poller, Write File, Remove File

Adapters x File Adapter FileAdapterConfiguration, ReadSchema, WriteSchema, SubscriptionService, PublicationService, PositionalFileRecord, DelimitedFileRecord

General x General Identity, EnterpriseArchive, Text Document, Folder, LibraryBuilder, Generic Image Resource, AliasLibrary, TaskList

Activities x General Activities Timer, Checkpoint, Log, Confirm, Job Shared Variable, Map Data, Catch, Wait, JNDI Configuration, Null, Notify, onNotificationTimeout, onStartup, Notify Configuration, Engine Command, Rethrow, Generate Error, SetVariable, Custom Activity, Sleep, onShutdown, Receive Notification, Inspector, Shared Variable, Lock, Call Process, External Command, onEventTimeout, Label, GetVariable, Assign

Activities x HTTP HTTP Connection, HTTP Receiver, Proxy Configuration, Send HTTP Request, Send HTTP Response, Wait for HTTP Request

Activities x JDBC (Java DataBase Connection) JDBC Get Connection, JDBC Connection, JDBC Call Procedure, JDBC Query, SQL Direct, JDBC Update

Activities x JMS JMS Topic Publisher, JMS Topic Requestor, JMS Queue Requestor, JMS Connection, Wait for JMS Queue Message, JMS Topic Subscriber, Wait for JMS Topic Message, JMS Queue Receiver, JMS Application Properties, Reply to JMS Message, JMS Queue Sender, Get JMS Queue Message

Activities x Java (EJB, JNDI) JavaCustomFunction, Java Method, Java Global Instance, Java To XML, Java Schema, XML To Java, Java Event Source, Java Code

Activities - Mail Receive Mail, Send Mail

Activities x Manual Work [interacts with TIBCO InConcert] WaitForCompletion, ModifyWork, AssignWork, GetWorkStatus, WorkflowServerConnection, WorkflowSchema, DownloadDocument

Activities x Parse (XSLT data transform using DTD or XSD or TIBCO AE Schema) Parse Data, Data Format, Render Data

Activities x Policy Security Policy, Security Policy Association

General x Process Process Definition, Process Archive

Activities x Rendezvous Publish Rendezvous Message, Wait for Rendezvous Message, Reply to Rendezvous Request, Rendezvous Transport, Rendezvous Subscriber

General x Repository Repository Instance, Object, Directory, Repository Finder

Activities - RMI RMI Lookup, RMI Server

Activities x SOAP (procsses WSDL) SOAPSendFault, SOAPSendReply, SOAPEventSource, SOAPRequestReply, RetrieveResources

Other x Service Content Resource, Service, SetContext, GetContext

Activities x TCP Read TCP Data, TCP Receiver, Wait for TCP Request, Write TCP Data, TCP Connection, TCP Open Connection, TCP Close Connection

Activities x Transaction JTA UserTransaction Configuration, XA TransactionManager Configuration, Transaction State

General x WSDL PortType, Operation, WSDL, Message

General x XML Tools Instance, Schema, DTD

Activities x XML Activities XSLT File, Parse XML, Render XML, Render XML, Transform XML

The jar files for these are stored in directory $TIBCO_HOME/bw/5.3/lib/palettes.

"Java Code" is the name of General Purpose custom activities written in Java.

Custom adapters can be created by programmers referencing the TIBCO Adapter SDK suite. Its documentation:

TIBCO Designer Palette Reference Guide (280 pages)

TIBCO BusinessWorks Palette Reference describes each of the palettes available in TIBCO BusinessWorks.

EMS (Enterprise Message Service)

TIBCO's EMS User's Guide. specifies these third-party J2EE EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) servers tested with EMS:

JBoss 4.0.2, 3.2.3, and 3.0.4

Borland Enterprise Server (BES) 5.1

BEA WebLogic 8.1, 7.0, and 6.1 with SP1

IBM WebSphere Application Server Version 5

Sun Java System Application Server 7

The following summarizes and extends information in the TIBCO EMS User's Guide.

EMS implements the ConnectionConsumer interface of the Java Messaging Service JMS 1.1 specification for application servers followed only by JBoss. JNDI names QueueConnectionFactory and TopicConnectionFactory are mapped to the JBoss ConnectionFactory in file &JBOSS_DEPLOY%\jms\jbossmq-service.xml.

For other servers (such as Borland), EMS tibjmsapps.jar (com\tibco\tibjms\appserver) has JBossAdapter.class, TibjmsService.class, and TibjmsServiceBean.class.

JBoss configuration files :

%JBOSS_DEPLOY%\jms\jms-ds.xml

%JBOSS_CONF%\boss-service.xml

%JBOSS_CONF%\standardjboss.xml

mdb output

META-INF\jboss.xml

%JBOSS_CLIENT%\jndi.properties

Other EMS client jars include crimson.jar (org\apache for sax), jaxp.jar (xml parser), jems.jar (javax\jms), jndi.jar, jta-spec1_0_1.jar (javax\transaction\xa), tibjms.jar (com\tibco\tibjms), tibjmsapps.jar (com\tibco\tibjms\admin\hawk), tibrvjms.jar (com\tibco\tibbrv)

Point-to-point EMS queues (defined in file queues.conf) are used to import messages from producers in external systems.

Queues have defined properties maxmsgs, overflowPolicy, maxRedelivery, exclusive, prefetch What are their performance impact?

Publish-subscrbe (broadcasted) EMS topics are used to import and export messages to/from external systems via TIBCO Rendezvous.

RVDQ is for load balancing

RVFT is for fault tolerance.

RVCM (Rendezvous Certified Messaging) Listeners are set in file tibrvcm.conf.

tibrvcm transports can store information about subjects in a ledger file used for recovery.

The application should only send a Certified message (CM) once, because TIBCO ensures it is received.

Transports are are set in file transports.conf.
File tibemsd.conf defines the tibrv_transports enabled.

What is the performance impact of Flow Control when message producers send messages much faster than message consumers can receive them.

Where to specify that a queue receiver can receive a batch of messages in the background to improve performance.

Where to specify fail safe mode that allows messages to be written to disk synchronously to guarantee no messages are ever lost due to server failure.

What is the performance impact of guaranteed message delivery (GMD) ?

Dynamic queues created on-the-fly by applications do not appear in configuration files which define static queues. These are marked with an asterisk (*).

EMS configuration files include: � users � groups � topics � queues � access lists � destination bridges � routes � connection factories � transports � RVCM listeners � durable subscribers

EMS fault tolerance is setup as a pair of primary and secondary servers sharing the same state.

Types of Messaging Interaction

What is the difference between Activities vs. Services ???

Initiator From Target Event Mode Ack Req? Service

Vendor application TIBCO infrastructure Asynchronous No Publishing service
(sends to target)

Vendor application TIBCO infrastructure Synchronous Yes Request-response invocation service
(sends to target, waits for response, then sends response to initiator)

TIBCO infrastructure Vendor application Asynchronous No Subscribing service
(gets from initiator)

TIBCO infrastructure Vendor application Synchronous Yes Request-response service
(gets from initiator, waits for response then sends response to target)

Wait for Adapter Message

Wait for Adapter Request

request/reply,

publish/subscribe

publish/reply

Transports

The Advanced configuration for a Rendezvous Transport provides RV Type selections:

Reliable
Certified
Disgtributed Queue

The RVFT protocol is used in RVRD config.

Formatting and Transforms

BusinessWorks Enterprise Archive

Preparing for Installation

This page summarizes and extends information in the TIBCO BusinessWorks Installation Guide.

The BW 5.3 installer takes about 80 MB of disk space when done. It takes an additional 50 MB in /tmp (/var/tmp in Solaris & HP-UX) for the installer's own JVM if the installer can't find a 1.4.2 JVM listed in the JAVA_HOME or JDKHOME environment variables.

Rather than installing while logged in as a super-user named "root", create a non-root account such as "tibco".

useradd tibco
passwd tibco

Then log in with your own individual user account and sudo to the tibco.

Create a \tibco\Media directory to hold install files downloaded from download.tibco.com:

Component Linux Installer Fixup Fixup

TRA TRA.5.4.0-suite_linux24g123_x86.bin -

TRA.5.4.2-suite_linux24g123_x86.bin -

BW Admin TIB_bw-tibcoadmin-epe-simple_5.3.0_linux86_24.bin ClassPath, Server Name

BW TIB_bw-simple_5.3.0_linux24g122_x86.bin -

TIB_bw-simple_5.3.2_linux24g122_x86.bin -

EMS Server TIB_ems-simple_4.3.0_linux24g123_x86.bin -

Hawk (that comes with TRA) TIB_hawk-suite_4.5.0_w32.exe ??? -

set read write permissions on the whole install tree:

chmod 777

BW Linux Installation

To install in text-based Console Mode, add these parameters to the installer executable:

./TIB_bw-simple_5.3.0_platform.bin -is:javaconsole -console

Its corresponding Windows installer is:

./TIB_bw-simple_5.3.0_win_x86.exe -is:javaconsole -console

Because enterprise installations involve several servers setup about the same way, when installing the first time, create a response file by adding:

-options-record /home/tibco/responsefile1.txt

Then to install subsequent machines in silent mode using the file:

./TIB_bw-simple_5.3.0_platform.bin -silent -options /home/tibco/responsefile1.txt

Save the options file in your version control system.

The installer maintains in the user's home directory an installation registry with two vpd (Vital Product Database) files:
vpd.properties and
vpd.properties.tibco.systemName

The TIBCOInstallationHistory.xml file logs all TIBCO products, features, and components installed and uninstalled. So don't mess with it.

Windows Installation

Windows installers create these folders:

TRA TIBCO Rendezvous 7.5.1 & 7.5.2 C:\tibco\tibrv 30.2 MB

Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0 C:\tibco\jre\1.5.0 107.4 MB

Third Party Core Libraries 5.4.0 C:\tibco\tpcl\5.4 114.7 MB

TIBCO Hawk 4.6.1 C:\tibco\hawk 16.1 MB

TIBCO Runtime Agent 5.4.0 & 5.4.2 C:\tibco\tra\5.4 95.6 MB

TIBCO Designer 5.4.0 C:\tibco\designer\5.4 20.0 MB

Admin TIBCO Administrator 5.3 C:\tibco\administrator\5.3 56.7 MB

BW TIBCO BusinessWorks 5.3.0 C:\tibco\bw\5.3 10.2 MB

TIBCO BusinessWorks 5.3.2 10.2 MB

EMS TIBCO EMS 4.3.0 C:\tibco\ems 85.0 MB

Adapter for ActiveDatabase TIBCO Adapter for ActiveDatabase 5.2.2 C:\tibco\adapter\adadb\5.2 71.4 MB

Adapter for Files TIBCO Adapter for Files 5.5.0 C:\tibco\adapter\adfiles\5.5 26.5 MB

Adapter for Events TIBCO BusinessEvents Enterprise Edition 1.4.0 C:\tibco\adapter\be\1.4 38.1 MB

The default domain name is localdev.

Configuration

TIBCO XML Canon requires a license key during installation. Its user profiles, roles, and permissions are independent of system or Windows domain user accounts. They, along with category folders, and life-cycle stages (e.g., Development, etc.) are specified using the TIBCO XML Canon Administrator GUI running off Tomcat web server.

XML Canon users can have ADMINISTRATOR or CONNECT capabilities.

To enable TIBCO EMA integration with TIBCO BusinessWorks, both TIBCO Hawk and TTIBCO EMA must be enabled with custom engine properties bw.engine.emaEnabled = True and Hawk.enabled = True

Ports

Component		default	Better
BW Tomcat	HTTP	8080	8888
	AJP 1.3	8009
	Shutdown	8005
	Apache Warp Connector	8008
EMS	HTTP	7222
EMS	HTTPS (using SSL)	7243
TIBCO Hawk		7474
Rendezvous Daemon service tcp:		7500
LDAP		389
TIBCO SmartSockets tcp:		5101
XML Canon Tomcat	HTTP	8088	8088
	HTTPS	8443
	Shutdown	8011
	Database	1433
	TIBCO Thin Client	1521

Tuning

How much performance impact is there to use of JMS_TIBCO_COMPRESS ?

How much performance impact is there to use of reliable message queue ?

Performance tuning Java with secret vm flags notes that tomcat typically has a very large number of short lived objects so setting -XX:NewSize=200m to increase the size of the heap allocated to short lived objects can make a difference.

Best Practices for Running TIBCO Rendezvous on Solaris OS 8 recommends creating a Dedicated Processor Set for Rendezvous Daemon (using the psrinfo command), Setting the TCP high and low watermarks, and setting maximum segment size (MSS)-sized packets.

Hawk's micro-agent provide business-level statistics such as specific objects being inserted, updated, or deleted in the database.

Hawk's AMI (Application Management Interface) routines can be embedded within custom adapters to expose application-specific information by the Hawk micro-agent.

Deployment EAR Size

Each EAR file contains local resources built by the developer and files specified in the AliasLibrary target listing.

Different AliasLibrary files should be specified for each combination of resources so that you only load the files needed by the project.

If you are livin' large with lots of resources and get a warning message about size, change the designer.ear.watermark.size=16 megabytes property in the designer.tra file. Also change the heap size.

Process Archive.par

Failover vs. Load Balancing

TIBCO applications are "cluster-unaware". They do not exchange data with other cluster objects.

TIBCO Administrator does not support parallel groups running concurrently within a cluster of several systems (supported by cluster vendors such as Veritas).

Consequently, TIBCO applications support warm failover (which takes a few seconds).

This means that additional hardware is used for standby in case of failover, not for load balancing. So servers for failover do not increase capacity. In contrast, additional servers increase capacity if clusters are load balanced. run separate copies hot-hot.

The Domain Utility is setup such as a network name or Virtual IP Address is used by external applications to address the cluster group as one logical machine.

Entire domains are installed on the local drives of each node.

Each cluster group has a hard drive that is shared within the group, but not outside the group.

TIBCO BusinessWorks achieves scalability by increasing the number of process engines within a domain. Process engines can be housed in different machines.

The number of threads defines the number of process engines.

Advisory activities configured in the Advanced folder of the adapter ???

TIBCO EMS sample tibjmsLoadBalancedTopicPublisher connects to the least busy server.

TIBCO Runtime Agent Installing Into a Cluster, which TIBCO defines as

a group of machines that work together as a single system to ensure that applications and resources are available at all times.

Fast SOA: The way to use native XML technology to achieve Service Oriented Architecture governance, scalability, and performance (Paperback, Morgan Kaufmann, November 17, 2006, 296 pages) by Frank Cohen of PushToTest.com

Deployments

static vs dynamic deployment elements (max jobs, memory size, etc)

how to manage product state migration

domainutilitycmd -cmdFile <install-path>\tibco\tra\5.4\template\domainutility\cmdline\ JoinLogicalMachine.xml

\AddSecondaryServer.xml

The XML file that defines configuration options is created when a doman is created.

BusinessWorks Documentation

In the Documentation folder after install:
TIBCO BusinessWorks Process Design Guide describes how to create, edit, and test business processes using TIBCO BusinessWorks.
TIBCO Administrator User's Guide
TIBCO Runtime Agent (TRA) Domain Utility User's Guide

TIBCO HL7 Integration Server User's Guide
� TIBCO Runtime Agent Release Notes Read the release notes for a list of new and changed features. This document also contains lists of known and closed issues for this release.
� TIBCO Runtime Agent Scripting Deployment User�s Guide Explains how to use the TIBCO Administrator scripting utilities to deploy applications.
� TIBCO Runtime Agent Domain Utility User�s Guide Explains how to use the TIBCO Domain Utility to create and manage administration domains.
� TIBCO Runtime Agent Installing Into a Cluster Explains how to install TIBCO applications into a cluster environment.
� TIBCO Runtime Agent Installation Explains how to install TIBCO Runtime Agent and TIBCO Adapter SDK.

In each version's platform-specific tar.z file for 5.3.0:
TIBCO BusinessWorks Concepts Guide steps through a simple example of designing, deploying, and monitoring a TIBCO BusinessWorks process.
TIBCO Administration Guide describes how to use TIBCO Administrator to deploy, manage, and monitor TIBCO BusinessWorks processes.
TIBCO Administrator Server Configuration Guide
TIBCO Administrator Installation Guide
TIBCO Runtime Agent Installation Guide
TIBCO BusinessWorks Quick Start

Error Messages

When the administration server starts, a message appears which TIBCO wants us to ignore:

log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.apache.commons.digester.Digester).

This is issued from the log4j logging class (with the log4j.properties file is in directory C:\Tibco\bw\5.3\lib) included in the Tomcat web server bundled with TIBCO Administrator. It's ignored because TIBCO Administrator provides its own logging mechanism. (Can't we all get along?)

Other messages are noted in the TIBCO BusinessWorks Error Codes document.

BW Logs

Component Log Path Diag. Prod.

TIBCO Administrator /home/tibco/tibco/tra/domain/domain/log
- -

TIBCO Hawk ? - -

TRA Domain Utility /home/tibco/tibco/tra/5.4/logs
- -

LDAP calls home\tibco\tibco\tra\domain\domain\logs\
administrator.log - -

EMS Server /opt/tibco/ems/log/ - -

BW Apps /tra/domain/domain/applcation/logs/
appname-parfile.log - -

In Designer, under the Logging tab of Generic Adapter configuration, unchecking the Advanced Logging checkbox enables uses to specify the roles and sinks holding logs. Unchecked, Designer by default provides under "LogSinks" "FileSink" (the default Log File) and "stdioSink" (for Standard I/O). The Logging tab controls default roles info, warning, and error messages.

TIBCO Hawk

Hawk provides facilities for monitoring domain resources.

It's demanding on resources, so many organizations don't use it.

Define the cluster IP address (such as 10.96.91.0) before adding machines to a TIBCO administratio domain.

The BW process engine is instrumented with a TIBCO Hawk microagent (tibemsadmin.hma) that can be used to perform most administrative functions performed by the Administration server.

Applications that interface to Hawk include:

iProcess Sentinels (a collection of engines) a part of Hawk iProcess client and Administrator
EM Advisor uses WSMF (Web Services Management Framework) and WSMD (Web Services Distributed Management) to communicate with HP OpenView and IBM Tivoli.
Hawk adaptor JMX plugin for Hawk.

Alerts

Local actions to be taken to alerts are defined using rulebases.

Rulebases loaded onto agents belongs to an administration (monitoring) domain administered by a TIBCO Administration Master Server.

Versioning and Multi-User Revision Control System (RCS)

Designer can archive and import all files of a project in a zip file.

To ensure that a particular resource configuration or folder can be changed by only one person at a time, files which have been checked-in can be locked.

Add Resource to RCS
Acquire-Check out Resource
Acquire-Check out Resource Following References
Release-Revert Resource
View RCS Info for Resource
Check in Changes
Synchronize Project
The table at right lists Multi-User menu item.

Unlike XML files in Sun J2EE compliant systems, TIBCO internally uses a proprietary (undocumented) XML schema that may change from version to version.

This means that a "diff" between what has been saved by SCM tools (CVS, Subversion, etc.).

Deploy on multiple environments throughout the development cycle (such as UnitTest, System Test, Performance Test, UAT, Beta, Staging, Production, etc.) require unique host names, etc..

To diff (identify differences between versions) checked in during a system's evolution, TIBCO provides its XML Canon product as a central repository that enables reuse of XML Schema and vocabularies.

XML Canon understands the relationship between the various types of XML documents and uses that understanding to render XML SchemaDOCs.

The REC-xml Standard

The XML Schema Standard

The WSDL Standard

A "schema" defines the classes, scalars (global variables), associations, unions, and sequences within a particular "namespace".

"Components" of XML include element, attribute, types, etc.

Only schemas, WSDL files and TIBCO BusinessWorks process definition files are analyzed for schema and component level relationships by TIBCO XML Canon. XML Canon prefixes such files with an asterisk.

TIBCO Business Studio Version 2 introduced version control using "Business Studio Asset Central".

Global Variables

Every new TIBCO project is created with a defaultVars folder containing a defaultVars.substvar file.

Testing TIBCO

To switch to production mode, turn on the testConsoleFlag.

TIBCO Security

The security template is in directory
\tibco\tra\version\config\security

Given specific security requirements, select appropriate security models

Given a set of security requirements, identify potential security options

how to grant and manage domain privileges

TIBCO Consultants

Here is a list of people who say they know TIBCO. I don't know any of them.

Global Enterprise Managers at 1434 Malcolm Drive, Dresher, PA 19025 Phone 215.706-4190

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