TIBCO Adapter SDK allows custom adapters to use a publish/subscribe or a request/reply transport protocol. This section gives an overview of both protocols. See
Chapter 7, TIBCO ActiveEnterprise Operation Model for more information about request/reply (client/server) interactions.
A publisher gets information from a source application, for example, an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application, and makes it available (publishes it) to the transport, directly or through an intermediary.
In publish/subscribe interactions, data producers (publishers) are decoupled from data consumers (subscribers), that is, they do not coordinate data transmission with each other. Information is routed to the appropriate consumer because that consumer has subscribed to all messages with the matching destination.
Demand for data drives request/reply (client/server) interactions. A client requests data from a server; the server computes an individual response and returns it to the client. Communication flows in both directions, as illustrated in
Figure 7. The complete interaction consists of two point-to-point messages—a request and a
reply.
Demand-driven computing is well-suited for distributed applications that require point-to-point messages. In request/reply interactions, data producers coordinate closely with data consumers. A producer does not send data until a consumer makes a request.
The server sends replies to the client that requested the data. The client listens until it receives the reply, and then stops listening (unless it expects further installments of information).
Note that the MPublisher method
sendWithReply() is not suited for this approach because it is always point-to-point.