Policy Distribution Engine

The TIBCO ActiveMatrix Policy Director Governance distribution engine is designed for dynamic and efficient distribution of policies and resources to a large number of governance agents.

The distribution engine is composed of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid components and deployed as a TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid Application on the system node. It uses TIBCO ActiveMatrix Grid Administrator's replication feature to support an environment with fault tolerance and load balance.

TIBCO ActiveMatrix Policy Director Governance Distribution Architecture

You can use TIBCO ActiveMatrix Policy Director Governance to define a single governance control and apply it to multiple Object Groups across ActiveMatrix Service Grid and also non-TIBCO SOA platforms. The Distribution Engine's job comprises the following:

  • Process all the Object Groups
  • Resolve the Governed Object members
  • Determine the Governance Agents on which each Governed Object is running
  • Compile appropriate policies for each Governance Agent

The distribution engine uses TIBCO ActiveMatrix Grid Administrator's replication feature to support set ups with fault tolerance and load balance.

Extensions

The adapter and resolver extensions support the distribution engine providing flexibility, scaling up for future Policy Enforcement Host platforms.

Adapter extensions communicate on the right channels with governance agents running on Policy Enforcement Hosts such as TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid. For example, a combination of TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid protocols and TIBCO Enterprise Message Service™ (EMS) is used to communicate with TIBCO ActiveMatrix Service Grid Governance Agent.

Resolver extensions resolve different kinds of governed objects and the governance agents responsible for enforcing policies on them.

The distribution engine also resolves shared resource dependencies of the governance controls and deploys them to governance agents as needed. For example, if a resource configuration is changed, the distribution engine will detect it and updates the governance agents based on the governance control dependencies of that resource.

After a policy or resource is distributed to the required governance agents, the distribution engine waits for status reports from each governance agent and processes them as they arrive. The status is aggregated at the governance control level and displayed to the user in the TIBCO ActiveMatrix Policy Director Governance Administrator UI or reported in CLI.