Introduction to TIBCO BusinessEvents : Deploy-time and Runtime Overview

Deploy-time and Runtime Overview
TIBCO BusinessEvents Express  The TIBCO BusinessEvents Express edition supports only In Memory object management. Therefore it does not support use of the TIBCO BusinessEvents Monitoring and Management component.
A TIBCO BusinessEvents design-time project is deployed as a TIBCO BusinessEvents application. When Cache object management (known as Cache OM) is used, the deployment can span multiple host servers.
You can use any of these deployment methods. It is recommended that you use only one method for each cluster you are deploying:
Using TIBCO Administrator. If you have been using this utility in your environment, you can continue to do so. (See Deployment in a TIBCO Administrator Domain in TIBCO BusinessEvents Administration.)
All of the deployment methods use two resources: an EAR file and a cluster deployment descriptor, which is an XML file. To deploy using TIBCO BusinessEvents Monitoring and Management, you also need a site topology file.
The Enterprise Archive Resource (EAR) is the deployable version of a TIBCO BusinessEvents application. The EAR file contains runtime version of the project ontology, the channel definitions, the state machines (if TIBCO BusinessEvents Data Modeling add-on software is used), and so on. When you are finished designing the project in TIBCO BusinessEvents Studio, you simply choose a menu option to build the EAR.
The rest of this section focuses mainly on the deploy-time and runtime components provided with TIBCO BusinessEvents. See TIBCO BusinessEvents Administration Components for a brief summary at the component level.
For more details about the topics in this section, see Chapter 3, CDD Configuration Procedures to Chapter 11, Hot Deployment in the TIBCO BusinessEvents Administration guide.
Cluster Deployment Descriptor (CDD)
All methods of deployment require a cluster deployment descriptor (CDD).
Object Management
In the CDD, you configure the object manager you have chosen for the deployment. Object management is a large topic covered in Chapter 6, Object Management Types and Chapter 7, Distributed Cache OM.
Processing Units
Also in the CDD you configure the agents and processing units (engines) that will use the rules and ontology types you designed in your project.
Each engine equates to one processing unit, which runs in one JVM (Java Virtual Machine). One processing unit can host multiple agents, except in the case of a cache agent. A processing unit that hosts a cache agent cannot host any other agents. Each TIBCO BusinessEvents agent is a runtime component of the overall application.
Different kinds of agents play different roles in a large application. For example, inference agents perform rule evaluation, and cache agents manage the object instances generated and used by the inference agents (when the Cache object management type is used). To include multiple agents in an engine instance you add multiple TIBCO BusinessEvents agent classes in one processing unit.
Configuring an agent involves the following (depending on the type of agent you are configuring):
For more information about configuring the CDD see Chapter 3, CDD Configuration Procedures in TIBCO BusinessEvents Administration.
Site Topology File
Before you can use MM for deployment, you define the site topology using the site topology editor in TIBCO BusinessEvents Studio. You can also edit the underlying XML file directly. However, in TIBCO BusinessEvents Studio, the site topology editor introspects the CDD and EAR files to make useful project information available during configuration.
In the site topology editor you configure deployment units and host machines. Each deployment unit consists of one or more processing units, and related deploy-time settings. Each host machine is configured with details such as the software used for remote deployment. Then you bind deployment units to the desired host machines.
Deployment with TIBCO BusinessEvents Monitoring and Management (MM)
After you have configured MM to communicate with the cluster to be monitored, and you have defined the site topology file, you can log in and use the MM Console to deploy, stop and start, pause, and resume processing units.
MM can also monitor units you start in other ways: all it needs is the PID of the JVM running the processing unit. However it can’t start engines that are not predefined in the site topology file.
Command-line tools for MM are available to perform basic deployment functions.
Monitoring and Management with MM
The MM component maintains a history of statistics, continuously queries the deployed engines for their status, and invokes methods on engines, as specified by the administrator. Various overview panels and panes provide graphical views and alerts about the health of the cluster. You can configure the health thresholds as desired.
You can also use TIBCO Administrator features for monitoring and management. However they are not specialized for TIBCO BusinessEvents, whereas the MM component is specifically designed for use with TIBCO BusinessEvents.
TIBCO Hawk Application Management Interface
TIBCO BusinessEvents includes a set of TIBCO Hawk microagent methods that allow you to manage your TIBCO BusinessEvents deployment using TIBCO Hawk. These functions are listed and described in Appendix D, TIBCO Hawk Microagent Methods, in TIBCO BusinessEvents Administration. TIBCO BusinessEvents Monitoring and Management provides a similar set of methods.
Hot Deployment
Depending on the changes made to your TIBCO BusinessEvents project, you may be able to replace an EAR file for a TIBCO BusinessEvents project with an updated one, without stopping the TIBCO BusinessEvents engine. This feature is referred to as hot deployment. For more information about the TIBCO BusinessEvents hot deployment feature, including the project changes that are supported, see TIBCO BusinessEvents Administration.