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FormBuilder Archives

Enterprise Archive (EAR)

In TIBCO Designer, a formflow project can have one or more Enterprise Archive (EAR) resources that correspond to an .ear file. To create an application definition in TIBCO Administrator, you must load an .ear file.

An Enterprise Archive consists of the following:

•

FormBuilder Archive resource, which corresponds to a deployable service in TIBCO Administrator. This archive contains the FormBuilder Desktop resource, which defines formflows. It also contains definitions of formflows, forms, custom layouts, custom controls, and any other dependent resources for a given project.

•	Deployment descriptors, which contain run-time parameters configured during deployment in TIBCO Administrator, are also included.

•	One or more Process Archive (PAR) resources, which contain any automated process definitions.

•	A Shared Archive (SAR) that contains the generic elements across all bundled archives, like templates, images, and classes. No configuration of this resource is necessary.

To Create an Enterprise Archive (EAR)

1.	In TIBCO Designer, create a new project. Using resources on the Form and Formflow palettes, create at least one formflow process definition.

A formflow must have at least a Start activity, a Show Form activity, and an End activity. For instructions on creating formflows, see Chapter 6, Designing Formflows.

2.	Create any automated process definitions required by the formflow application.

3.	Create the FormBuilder Desktop resource and add your formflow to it.

4.	Select Project>Validate for Deployment to check for any configuration errors, and correct all errors before proceeding.

5.	With the top-level folder selected, open the General palette.

6.	Locate the Enterprise Archive resource and drag the resource to the configuration panel.

7.	Drag a FormBuilder Archive resource from the TIBCO BusinessWorks FormBuilder palette to the design panel.

8.	On the Processes tab, browse to the FormBuilder Desktop in the current project, then click OK.

Automated processes and formflows called by the selected formflow are automatically included in the archive. However, if formflows or forms are called dynamically in a formflow, an extra step is required.

−	Any formflows that are called dynamically using the Process Name Dynamic Override field must be manually added to the archive.

−	Forms that are specified dynamically must be added to a mock formflow, and this formflow must be manually added to the archive.

9.	Click the Enterprise Archive resource in the project panel, then click the Build Archive button and save the project.

Platform Archives

The platform archives are used for deploying formflow applications during development phase.

FormBuilder Desktop requires libraries from multiple TIBCO products to run.

When a software update is installed, such as a new version of TIBCO BusinessWorks FormBuilder, the existing platform archives are updated automatically. Updating of an archive must be performed on the machine that hosts FormBuilder Desktop, and where the servlet engine is installed.

Once rebuilt, the platform archive is picked up automatically during deployment from its location in bwfb_install_dir/version/archive/shared/shared.ear.

To Manually Update a Platform Archive

There are situations when platform archives need to be updated, but there is no automatic mechanism to do that. This happens after installation of hot fixes for components such as TIBCO Runtime Agent, TPCL libraries, and TIBCO BusinessWorks.

In such cases, you need to update the platform archive manually.

•	Log into the directory and execute the following command:

On Windows:
installation_directory\bin\CreatePlatformArchive.bat

UNIX:
installation_directory/bin/CreatePlatformArchive.sh

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