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The TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Integration Platform

This section introduces the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks integration platform by discussing the following topics:

•	TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Prerequisites

•	TIBCO Administration Domain

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks Prerequisites

The following products are prerequisites for TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks and must be installed prior to installing TIBCO BusinessWorks:

•

TIBCO Runtime Agent (TRA) supplies a number of TIBCO and third-party libraries used by TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks and other TIBCO products both at design-time and runtime. This includes, for example, TIBCO Rendezvous software. You must install TIBCO Runtime Agent on each machine that hosts a TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks process engine.

−	TIBCO Designer is a graphical user interface (GUI) that is installed as part of TRA. TIBCO Designer provides and easy-to-use design-time environment that supports adapter configuration, process design, and testing of the integration project.

•	TIBCO Administrator supports deployment, security administration, and monitoring and management of processes and machines. TIBCO Administrator consists of the TIBCO Administration Server and the web browser based TIBCO Administrator GUI.

Once the prerequisite products are installed, you may install the following components of TIBCO BusinessWorks:

•	The TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine runs the business processes in test mode and at run-time.

•

The TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks design-time plug-in provides the palettes and resources to TIBCO Designer for creating business processes. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks was designed using a plug-in architecture. There are special-use plug-ins that you can procure separately, such as the TIBCO BusinessWorks EJB Plug-in that allows you to work with Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs).

•	The TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine runs the business processes in test mode and at run-time.

The illustration below shows how the products work together.

Figure 4 TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks development

 

 

TIBCO Administration Domain

The TIBCO administration domain combines the benefits of a distributed run-time environment with centralized design time deployment, and run-time monitoring and management. This section discusses the TIBCO administration domain, the associated security implementation, and how you monitor and manage the domain.

Administration Domain Overview

A TIBCO administration domain is a collection of users, machines, and TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks components that a TIBCO Administration Server monitors and manages. There is only one Administration Server for each administration domain. Components within an administration domain can communicate with systems outside the domain, but the administration domain is the administrative boundary of an enterprise integration project.

Note that when the Administration Server goes down, all process engines and adapters continue to run.

Figure 5 illustrates an administration domain and its contents.

Figure 5 Components of a TIBCO administration domain

A TIBCO administration domain consists of these elements, numbered correspondingly in Figure 5:

1.	TIBCO Administration Server—Each administration domain has one and only one TIBCO Administration Server.

2.	Components—Component software includes the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks engine and adapters.

3.

Machines—Each TIBCO administration domain contains one or more machines. A machine can be added to an administration domain when a TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks component or adapter is installed. By default, all machines within an administration domain are expected to be in the same network subnet. You can, however, set up your system to use TIBCO Rendezvous rvrd and can then use TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks across subnets.

4.	User and Access Information—User and authorization information is specified with the TIBCO Administrator GUI and stored in the domain data store. See Security below.

5.

Projects—A project is created with the TIBCO Designer GUI. You create an Enterprise Archive file (EAR file) for the project with TIBCO Designer, then send that file to the machine where administration server resides. You can then deploy the project with TIBCO Administrator. Once deployed, the project becomes visible in the TIBCO Administrator GUI and its components can be started, stopped, and monitored from there. See Projects.

Security

The TIBCO Administration Server supports centralized authentication and authorization. Using the TIBCO Administrator GUI, users with full administrative privileges can define which users should have access to which part of the system.

•	Authentication—The verification of the identity of a person or process.

•

Authorization—Permission to view or execute. An administrator gives users access rights to the functionality of the product they need. For example, access rights are given to view or to write to projects at design time from TIBCO Designer or to view or to manage modules from the TIBCO Administrator console. The TIBCO Administration Server controls that access.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks supports authentication and authorization for both data stores and components (process engines or adapters) in the administration domain. For example, only authorized users may start or stop process engines or adapters. This fine-grained user authorization scheme allows you to customize the system to your company’s needs.

Monitoring and Managing the Domain

The TIBCO Administrator GUI allows you to monitor and manage the different elements of the administration domain if you are authorized to do so.

•	View, add, and delete users and assign access privileges to each user.

•	Monitor and manage the machines in the administration domain.

•	Monitor deployments. This includes viewing component status and throughput and looking at traces, which can also be exported to a file.

•	Manage deployments. This includes stopping and starting process engines and adapters.

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