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Architecture Overview

An administration domain is a collection of users, machines, and services. A domain is managed by an administration server, which is assisted by a TIBCO Hawk agent running on each machine in the domain.

The next diagram shows the basic components in an administration domain. TIBCO Hawk agent uses microagents and rulebases to monitor activity among the components in the administration domain. Depending on the transport used for inter-domain communication, domain information can be stored in a database or in files.

Figure 1 Components in Administration Domain

Administration Server

An administration server manages resources in an administration domain. A machine can have multiple domains, with each domain assigned a unique server. Each time a domain is created, a new server is created for the domain and named with the domain name.

When configuring an administration server, you specify the transport to use for managing communications in the administration domain. Either TIBCO Rendezvous or TIBCO Enterprise Message Service can be used as the transport.

If TIBCO Rendezvous is used as the transport in an administration domain, you can create secondary servers to load balance client-server activity in the domain. In this case, the initial administration server is known as a primary server and other servers are known as secondary servers. Multiple secondary servers are allowed in the same administration domain, but each must be on a different machine. The machine that hosts the primary server cannot also host a secondary server.

If TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is used as the transport, there is no need for secondary servers. (You can create secondary servers, but they are just like primary servers.) The only deployment option is Local, which means that client applications run independent of the administration server (unless an application performs certain operations that require connecting to the administration server, such as HTTP and SOAP authentication). See Deployment Choices for more information.

The administration server runs under the Tomcat web server as a servlet. Tomcat ports are defined when using TIBCO Domain Utility to configure the administration domain. The ports can be changed later using Domain Utility.

Data about the machines, registered software, users, roles, access control lists, application configurations and deployment history is maintained for an administration domain. If you have configured a domain to use the TIBCO Enterprise Message Service as the transport, domain storage must be in a database. Domains configured to use TIBCO Rendezvous can store data in a file repository or in database. See Database and File-based Storage for details.

Each administration domain contains one or more machines. You add a machine to a domain using TIBCO Domain Utility. You can start Domain Utility at any time to manage domain machines, domain configurations, administration server settings, upgrade domains and register a TIBCO Enterprise Message Service server.

TIBCO Hawk Agent

TIBCO Hawk agent is part of the TIBCO Runtime Agent package and is installed on each machine in an administration domain. TIBCO Hawk agent monitors local resources and conditions. An Agent uses collections of locally loaded rules organized into rulebases to apply monitoring logic.

The Hawk agent also builds local client.tra and .exe files when a client application is deployed, and on Windows platforms, creates NT services for applications.

The administration server retrieves the monitoring information displayed in the TIBCO Administrator GUI from a Hawk Agent, which runs as a separate process on each machine in the domain.

The TIBCO Administrator GUI provides a dialog to configure rulebases, set monitoring options, and display status. See the TIBCO Administrator User Guide for more information.

LDAP Directory Server

You can integrate an administration domain with an LDAP directory server to use the users and groups defined in the LDAP directory. The groups then become visible in TIBCO Administrator GUI. As part of domain creation, the TIBCO Domain Utility prompts for the information to retrieve, the synchronization interval, and other options.

The administration server only retrieves information from an LDAP directory server, it never sends or stores information there.

Client Applications

Applications can communicate directly with the administration server when configuration data for the application is stored in the administration domain repository. The administration server can also send application data directly to the machine on which that application is running, and the application will then work independently of the administration server. If you are using TIBCO Enterprise Message Service as the domain transport, application data is always sent to the local machine where the application is running.

Associated with each client application is a .tra file, which determines certain aspects of how the application is run. The .tra file is created during deployment and available on the deployment machine in the TIBCO_TRA_DOMAIN_HOME/domain-name/application/application-name directory.

You can manually edit the client application’s .tra file, however, each time you deploy (or redeploy) the corresponding client application, TIBCO Administrator overwrites the .tra file. Using the TIBCO Administrator GUI to manage .tra file content and not editing the file is therefore highly recommended.

Programmatically, applications such as adapters use a project locator string to specify location and protocol information. See Server-Based Repository Locator String for details.

Application Domains

If your TIBCO application supports this feature, you can create multiple application domains and assign client applications to use them. An application domain allows you to specify a repository to hold application data only. This is useful, for example, when your applications need to use a local database rather than that used by the administration domain.

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