Application Archives
An application archive is a deployment unit for an application that is generated in TIBCO Business Studio™ for BusinessWorks™. It is the only artifact that is handed from the design phase to the runtime as it contains all the bundles and metadata that is required to deploy and run the application.
Applications are developed using the features available in TIBCO Business Studio for BusinessWorks and can range from simple to very complex. An TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks™ application consists of an application module (Application Modules), which in turn consists of one or more processes that define the business logic, and zero or more shared modules (Shared Modules). ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks™ can also contain OSGi bundles that do not contain ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks artifacts.
An application archive contains one or more OSGi bundles, one each for all the modules referenced directly or indirectly by the application. It also contains application metadata which is used during deployment.
At runtime, application names must be unique within an AppSpace. When you deploy an application, each application in an AppSpace is identified by its unique name and a major.minor version number. The version number is important as it provides traceability and helps troubleshoot in case of an error at runtime. If any further modifications are made to the application, the archive file must be regenerated with an updated version number and redeployed to the AppSpace. Any modifications to the application are then installed as hot fixes or service packs. Only a specific version of an application can be modified by a hotfix or service pack.