Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 8 Setting Deployment Options : Changing TIBCO BusinessWorks Process Configuration Properties

Changing TIBCO BusinessWorks Process Configuration Properties
You can enable or disable TIBCO BusinessWorks processes, set the maximum jobs that can be in memory, enable or disable the activation limit and set the maximum jobs that can be in memory and paged.
To Change Process Configuration Properties
1.
In TIBCO Administrator, click Application Management.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Click the Advanced tab.
6.
7.
Click Save.
Controlling Execution of TIBCO BusinessWorks Services
Process starters create process instances to handle incoming events. Process instances consume memory and CPU resources on your system. Depending on the available machine resources, you may only be able to run a limited number of process instances concurrently.
Process instances typically remain in memory as long as they are executing an activity. If the process instance is waiting for an incoming event (for example, a Wait for Adapter Message activity), the process instance can be paged out to disk and resumed later after the event arrives. New process instances are paged out to disk until there is available memory and resources to accommodate them.
You can use TIBCO Administrator to control the execution of TIBCO BusinessWorks process instances. This is useful if your system has limited memory or resources, or if you want to restrict process instances to run sequentially.
The TIBCO BusinessWorks Process Configurations dialog, accessed by selecting the process archive in the Configuration Builder, allows you to specify the following:
The following sections describe these configuration settings and the relationship between the settings.
To Access the Process Configurations
1.
Select the process archive (.par) in the application’s Configuration Builder pane.
2.
Specifying the Maximum Number of Concurrently Active Processes
Incoming events may not be evenly distributed over time. That is, there may be periods where a large number of incoming events occur and other periods where relatively few events occur. To prevent your system from being overwhelmed by incoming events, the Max Jobs (Flow Limit) field limits the number of process instances created by a process starter. This allows you to control the flow of processing so that incoming events are no longer accepted when the limit is reached.
Controlling the flow of processing is especially useful when you are using protocols that can store unsent messages on the server until the receiver is ready to process them. For example, if your process definition polls an email server for new messages (that is, Receive Mail is the process starter), and then you can set Max Jobs (Flow Limit) to control the number of process instances created for each new email. Email that has not been processed remains on the email server until the process engine is ready to create more process instances. Other protocols where this approach are useful are TIBCO Rendezvous Certified Messaging (RVCM), JMS durable topic subscriptions, and JMS queues.
When a process engine reaches the specified Max Jobs (Flow Limit), it is placed in a FLOW_CONTROLLED state. In this state, the process engine can continue executing existing process instances, but new process instances are not allowed. Incoming messages can then be directed to another process engine. A process engine will resume creating new process instances once a sufficient number of its current process instances have completed.
Specifying Maximum Number of Concurrent Processes in Memory
The Max Jobs field in the Process Configurations dialog allows you to specify the maximum number of concurrent process instances that can be stored in memory. For example, if you set Max Jobs to 5, the process engine can only keep five process instances in memory. Any process instances created once the maximum is reached must be paged out to disk.
Specifying a value for Max Jobs causes the process engine to incur some overhead for managing the paging of process instances to and from disk. If you have sufficient system resources and do not expect incoming events to exceed the limits of your system, consider specifying Max Jobs as 0. This allows the process engine to create an unbounded number of process instances and eliminates the overhead of paging.
Keeping Services in Memory
The Activation Limit field specifies that once a process instance is loaded into memory, it should not be paged out to disk until it completes. This option is useful if you wish to specify sequential processing of incoming events, or if you want to enforce limited concurrent execution of process instances.
Effects of Setting the Configuration Fields
The Max Jobs and Activation Limit options work together to provide different concurrency limits. The Max Jobs (Flow Limit) field also affects the concurrency limit. The next table describes the effects of various combinations of these options.
Note: If your goal is to sequentially process incoming events, use the Sequencing Key field on the Misc tab of the process starter. Using Max Jobs and Activation Limit incurs overhead as process instances are paged to disk and retrieved from disk.
Note: If your goal is to sequentially process incoming events, use the Sequencing Key field on the Misc tab of the process starter. Using Max Jobs and Activation Limit incurs overhead as process instances are paged to disk and retrieved from disk.

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved