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TIBCO Designer Interface Overview

The TIBCO Designer interface allows you to perform various functions. This section describes the TIBCO Designer main window and explains what you see in each of its panels.

Main Window

Figure 3 illustrates the TIBCO Designer window.

Figure 3 The TIBCO Designer Window

The TIBCO Designer window has these components:

•	Menu bar and Menus. See Appendix A, Menu Reference

•	Toolbar icons. See Appendix B, Toolbar Icons Reference

•	Tabs in the leftmost area allow you to change what is displayed in the panel. See Customizing the Display.

When something in the design panel or the configuration panel is selected, the panel is highlighted. This helps you see at one glance where the focus is.

•

Memory Release Button and Memory Configuration Display. Memory Configuration Display indicates the used memory out of the total available memory for the TIBCO Designer project. When you press the Memory Release Button, it invokes the garbage collector for the running Designer application. It releases memory hold by unreferenced objects and thus results in the reallocation of memory for the Designer application. Memory Configuration Display keeps on updating the value displayed, whenever any action is performed inside the Designer project.

•	Four panels, which are (starting in the top-left corner and continuing clockwise):

−	Project panel (can display the project tree or the project’s global variables)

−	Design panel

−	Configuration panel

−	Palette panel

You can rearrange the panels and what they display. For example, the project panel and palettes can be combined to share one set of tabs. See Customizing the Display for more information.

The following sections explain the contents of each panel.

Project Panel

A project contains resources that implement the enterprise integration. This includes services (producers and consumers of information), any business logic that may be applied to that information, and deployment information.

By default, the project panel allows you to view the Project Display or Global Variables Display. When used in conjunction with other projects, the panel can be used for other purposes, for example, in conjunction with the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks tester.

Project Display

With the Project tab selected, the project panel displays the project tree. This includes the top-level (root) folder and the hierarchy of resources. The hierarchy of folders and resources corresponds to the hierarchy of folders and files in the project folder.

Figure 4 illustrates an example project, ProcessNewComputer, in the project panel. Multiple TIBCO products were used to create the integration project: it contains two TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks process definitions (ProcessOrder and ProcessSoap) and a Siebel adapter (SBLAccount).

Figure 4 Project Tree in Project Panel

Global Variables Display

Global variables are associated with each project. To display them, click the Global Variables tab of the project panel. Clicking the pencil icon displays the global variable editor. See Working With Global Variables for more information.

Figure 5 Global Variables in Project Panel

 

Resources

Resources are the components of a project. A simple TIBCO Designer resource corresponds to an object in a TIBCO application, such as an adapter configuration, an adapter service, a process definition, or an FTP activity.

Resources can be complex and contain other resources, much like a folder can contain other folders on your computer's file system. For example, an adapter configuration may contain multiple folders with multiple publisher or subscriber service resources.

Each top-level resource (for example, each adapter configuration) corresponds to a file in the project’s hierarchy of files in the project directory. This design allows developers to use a source control system and to check out only the top-level resources they are working with from a source control system, thus sharing their work.

Most resources have context-sensitive help available for the configuration of that resource. Right-click on the resource and choose What Is This? from the popup menu for more information on configuring the resource.

If TIBCO Designer cannot determine the type of a resource, it displays it as a special icon. This icon might indicate, for example, that the palette for that resource is not installed, that the file is not really part of your project, or that it has a misleading extension. While you can place any file in a project, TIBCO Designer will display an error if it cannot map the file extension to a resource. For example, source control systems may hide files from the user. If you open a TIBCO Designer project that was under source control without the revision control system, these files will become visible and will be treated as "unknown" resources. The icon at left may be different on Unix systems.

Palette Panel

Palettes organize resources and allow you to add them to your project. You select resources in the palette panel and drag and drop them into the design panel to add them to your project.

See Working With Palettes for more information.

Design Panel

The design panel displays the current resource selected in the project panel. For resources that contain other resources, the contents of the selected resource are shown in the design panel. For example, if you select a folder, its contents is displayed.

Configuration Panel

The configuration panel allows you to specify various configuration options for each resource. The type and the purpose of the selected resource determine the contents of the configuration panel. Usually there are one or more tabs in the configuration panel that allow you to access the various configuration options. The tabs organize the configuration options for the resource.

Click the help icon in the top right corner of the configuration panel for online help on the current selection.

After you have added the configuration information, you must click the Apply button for each tab. If you decide you do not want to add the configuration information, click Reset before you apply any changes to return to the previous values for each field in the tab.

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