Adapter Life Cycle In general, the life cycle of an adapter includes four stages: installation, configuration, deployment, and monitoring. Installation The installation stage includes installing the vendor application to which the adapter connects and other software from TIBCO on which the adapter depends. For many adapters, the adapter and vendor application need not be installed on the same machine, while the TIBCO Runtime Agent software must be installed on each computer that runs the adapter. Configuration In the configuration stage, you can create and modify an adapter instance by using TIBCO Designer. The configuration information is required for a runtime adapter to interact with the vendor application and other applications. Deployment An adapter instance created by TIBCO Designer can be deployed using TIBCO Administrator or TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator. In the latter case, you must first import the Designer project into TIBCO Business Studio or convert the EAR file to a service assembly. Monitoring In this stage, use one of the following tools to manage and monitor the adapter: • the built-in monitoring tools provided by TIBCO Administrator or TIBCO ActiveMatrix Administrator • the TIBCO Hawk microagents