TIBCO BusinessEvents

What is TIBCO BusinessEvents?

What businesses need today is something that will perceive and identify various diverse events that occur within and across the organization, which may result and lead to a significant condition, problem, or opportunity that requires an immediate response or human intervention. These events may occur in a specific pattern or trend and may result to a specific outcome that could likely make an impact to the company either in a positive or a negative way. TIBCO BusinessEvents is a leading software in complex event processing that addresses the concern of responding to certain conditions or situations before they occur by processing or executing predefined rules. In this document, you will learn more about what TIBCO BusinessEvents can do, its features and advantages, and how easily you can define and make use of its resources.

1. What is Complex Event Processing?

Complex Event Processing is an event processing technology that processes events uninterruptedly. It is different from other event processing technologies because it treats all events as potentially significant and aims to identify meaningful events within the event cloud. It employs techniques such as detection of complex patterns of many events, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events. You can use the data gathered by your car sensors, for example, to generate certain types of events. These car sensors measure the change in pressure of tires over time. If it detects that there is a dramatic drop in tire pressure within a small amount of time, it may send out a "lossOfTirePressure" event, notify the driver about the situation, and respond by slowing down the car. You can see that before the car experiences a flat tire, the system sends out a notification; thus, the problem that is likely to occur is prevented from happening. TIBCO BusinessEvents is a software that specializes in Complex Event Processing. It analyzes the cause and impact of different meaningful events and how to respond to those that may be considered as a potential harm or benefit. It also works on correlating massive amount of data about many events and applying specific rules to identify situations that require a response. BusinessEvents is "proactive", which means that it responds before problems arise and opportunities come; thereby, eliminating possible complications that may happen and grabbing the chance or opportunity to gain leverage in business.

2. What are the different aspects of Complex Event Processing?

One aspect is about knowing the state of persons, objects, or entities in your business. It is monitoring of certain events and observation of certain performance indicators or criteria. Another aspect is about detecting significant facts about persons, objects, or entities in your business and responding to specific conditions that occur. The last is about tracking information over a period of time and tracing pertinent data that may result to a problem or an opportunity.

3. BusinessEvents enables CEP problems to be solved through a model-driven
approach. What are these various models?

These models are the Event model, Concept model, Rule and Ruleset model, Rule Functions, and State model. The event model provides inputs into BusinessEvents through the event properties and optionally their XML payload. The Concept model refers to data concepts mapped from events properties or payload, or other means into BusinessEvents. Rules provide the behavioral mechanisms in BusinessEvents and are composed of the declarations, optional conditions, and actions. Rulesets serve as containers of related rules. Rule functions refer to algorithms, procedures, or functions, which have arguments and a body. They are reusable components in BusinessEvents projects. State model refers to some state machine or state model representation, which describes the states that an entity can hold, the transitions allowed between the states and the conditions for such transitions.

4. What are channels and destinations?

Channels represent a physical connection to a resource such as Rendezvous daemon or Java Message Service. Destinations are contained in only one channel and represent listeners to messages from that resource, and they can also send messages to that resource.

5. What are the types of channels?

There are three types of channels: TIBCO Rendezvous channels, JMS Channels, and Local channels. TIBCO Rendezvous channels use the Rendezvous daemon as a connection resource while the JMS Channels use the JMS as a connection resource. Local channels are used to route events to multiple rule sessions. Rule sessions refer to an instance of the BusinessEvents engine.

6. What is the difference between serializers and deserializers?

Serializers are used by BusinessEvents to convert events to messages while deserializers are used by BusinessEvents to convert messages to events.

7. What are the three sorts of event that BusinessEvents supports?
The three types of events supported are the simple event, time event, and advisory event. When called event, this refers to a simple event which defines an object that represents an activity such as debiting an account, logging an employee, or suspending a fraud account. You can define the properties of simple events. Time events are timers that are used to trigger rules. There are two types: the repeating time event which repeats every specified interval and the rule-based time event which is asserted into working memory after a specified period of time. Rule-based event can be done by using the ontology function provided in BusinessEvents. Lastly, the advisory event is an event asserted into working memory when certain condition occurs such as exceptions or errors, the failure of the BusinessEvents engine to invoke or call a BusinessWorks process, and the success condition of engine startup or activation. You do not have to create or configure an event of advisory type because it is automatically available for use in the resource list when you add a resource to the declaration portion of a rule.

8. What are concepts?

Concepts are descriptive entities similar to object oriented concept of a class. They describe a set of properties. For example, an Employee concept can have properties such as FirstName, LastName, Salary, and Department. Concepts have property history and you can set the history size to a number of values with their timestamp, which you want to keep in working memory or a persistent storage. History policies can either be Changes only, which means values will be stored only when they are modified or changed, or All Values, which means values will be stored all the time even though they are not modified or changed. Concepts can also have inheritance, containment, and reference relationships.

9. What are database concepts?

Database concepts are BusinessEvents concepts created by mapping tables or views from a database. Each row in a table represents one database concept instance, and each column represents the properties of the database concept. Database concepts are different from BusinessEvents concepts because you can perform database operations such as query, insert, update and delete.

10. What is a scorecard?

A scorecard is a special type of concept that serves as static variables available throughout the BusinessEvents project. Scorecards are used to track certain key factors. Unlike a BusinessEvent concept, a scorecard is itself a single instance and not a description for creating instances. It is created during design-time. Rules are used to view and update the values of the properties in a scorecard.

11. What is a rule? What comprises a rule?
Rules provide the behavioral mechanisms in BusinessEvents. A rule is composed of the declaration of entity types such as events or concepts, optionally one or more conditions, and an action. The action is executed by BusinessEvents when all of the conditions evaluate to true or there is no condition specified. BusinessEvents rules are declarative rather than procedural. This means that there is no definite execution of these rules but you can specify a rule priority to determine which rule or rules are executed first when certain condition occurs. The rule priority is a number from 1 to 10 with 1 as the highest priority and 10 as the lowest priority. The default value is 5. When you leave the rule priority to a default value, this means that the BusinessEvents will be the one to choose or decide which rule will be executed when certain condition occurs. Rules are contained within a ruleset which serves as a container of related rules.
12. What is a state modeler?
State modeler is a Unified Modeling Language (UML) compliant application that allows you to model the lifecycle of an instance. For each instance of a given concept, you can define which states it can have and how it will change from state to state based on applicable rules. A state model begins with a start state and ends with one or more end states. It is similar to a finite state automaton. In between may be simple, composite and concurrent states connected by transitions. A simple state is a state that has an entry and an exit action. A composite state is like a group of nested folders that contain other states. A concurrent state allows multiple state flows to be passed on. Transitions determine when an instance of a concept passes from one state to another which is indicated by complex transitions, or from a state to itself which is indicated by self-transitions.
13. What is a rule function?
A rule function is an algorithm or method you write in BusinessEvents language for use in the entire project. A rule function is composed of arguments and a body. It can return a value, for example, integer, String, or boolean data type. It can also return void or no value. Rule functions can be used as event preprocessors and can be executed during engine startup or shutdown.
14. What is an event preprocessor?
An event preprocessor is a rule function with one argument of type simple event. It performs actions after an incoming message is converted into a simple event but before it is asserted into working memory. This means that before a rule can process the simple event, the event preprocessor executes certain tasks first.

15. What is a virtual rule function?
A virtual rule function is a rule function that has arguments but no body. Its implementation is provided in the Decision Manager Business User Interface. The implementations are called decision table classes or external classes since they exist outside the BusinessEvents engine. Each row in a decision table forms a simple rule and collectively defines the body of the virtual rule function.

16. What is Decision Manager, its use, and importance?
Decision Manager is a component of BusinessEvents. It is an Eclipse-based platform. Its friendly user interface allows a non-technical user to write, test, and deploy business rules to the BusinessEvents engine. Users who do not know programming or TIBCO BusinessEvents can participate in the formulation of rules and rule functions and make their logic become part of the overall BusinessEvents project. It is a client application to Rules Management Server and is supported only in Windows platform.

17. What is a Rule Management Server?
A Rule Management Server (RMS) is another component of BusinessEvents, which manages decision projects and provides a mechanism for approval. It also provides user authentication, decision project authorization, and other project management features. Decision Manager communicates with Rules Management Server to check out decision projects, update local copies of decision tables, and commit changes. RMS users can then approve or reject those changes. What is nice in RMS is that it can be accessed remotely through a router or the Internet, which means that it does not have to be installed on the user's machine.

18. Describe how an RMS project is created and used by Decision Manager users.
The BusinessEvents project is created by the user. He creates events, concepts, rules, and rule functions. The project must contain at least one virtual rule function. The EAR file for this project is built and the RMS user sets up an RMS project for it. The RMS user creates access control files which define the appropriate personnel that can access the decision project, domain model files which define what ontology resources the business user is allowed to utilize, and others such as test files that contain data to test the decision table. After that, the RMS user starts the RMS server and informs the business user that it is already running. The business user logs into Decision Manager and requests for a decision project by checking it out and saving it to his local computer. The business user creates one or more decision tables locally with a locally running BusinessEvents engine started by Decision Manager automatically. The business user commits the decision project for approval. The RMS user receives the request, reviews the project, and then approves or rejects it. If he approves it, the RMS generates class files in a known location on a production BusinessEvents engine or he can manually save it there. The class files are either hot deployed to a running system or deployed when the BusinessEvents system starts up. After this, the business logic defined by the business user is now part of the BusinessEvents application.

Conclusion
With TIBCO BusinessEvents, you can identify significant events and information over time within your organization. You can analyze the most likely impact of these events to your business and prevent the occurrence of problems and grab every opportunity that comes to your business. This prediction capability of TIBCO BusinessEvents makes it truly one of a kind and the leading software when it comes to complex event processing. It also incorporates business users to formulate rules based on their own expertise and integrate these rules in TIBCO BusinessEvents. It is a fantastic way to collaborate in building projects and this results to higher throughput, efficiency, and leverage in business.

TIBCO BusinessConnect

What is TIBCO BusinessConnect?

Real-time business is the most important factor that is needed by businesses today. It links the proceedings of personnel, applications and partners through fast and efficient communication. It makes information available anytime and anywhere. It is flexible to the changes that may happen anytime, which will optimize the business activities accordingly. TIBCO makes sure that these capabilities are within our reach. TIBCO BusinessConnect lets you experience optimized business flow, integrated application and a secure communication across all your trading partners.

What is TIBCO BusinessConnect?

TIBCO BusinessConnect is business-to-business (B2B) communication software that enables different companies to establish a secure transaction using dissimilar internal systems. It is integrated with the TIBCO BusinessWorks platform. It uses a web-based administration tool called TIBCO Administrator for easy configuration of server settings, hosts, business partners, security settings, and business protocols. Internal applications that communicate to the BusinessConnect server can be easily created using TIBCO Designer. BusinessConnect enables business partners to exchange documents with reliable security capabilities and non-repudiation support.

What is non-repudiation?

Non-repudiation means a proof of existence of a certain transaction. This feature will really benefit the companies because transactions are recorded with digital signatures and timestamp, which prove that a transaction has taken place. Neither the host nor the partner company can deny that a transaction took place. All transaction records are saved on the database, and you can use a third party application to connect to BusinessConnect for this feature.

What are the protocols supported by BusinessConnect?

BusinessConnect supports popular B2B protocols such as RosettaNet, chemXML, UCCnet, ebXML, cXML, xCBL, EDI, and EDI - HIPAA. Upon installation, BusinessConnect is bundled with the EZComm protocol. It supports transports such as HTTP(S), FTP(S), SMTP, FILE, AS1 and AS2. It also supports data format like XML, MIME, S/MIME, SOAP and EDI, as well as multiple security standards, such as PKCS and Java Keystore.

What is a business protocol?

A business protocol is a standard used by the BusinessConnect server for the communication of two business partners. BusinessConnect has an Operation Editor that lets you configure your selected protocol.

How do you set-up a B2B connection?

You will be using the TIBCO Administrator to set-up a B2B Connection. First, you have to deploy the BusinessConnect engine on the TIBCO Administrator. It can be a Single Server Mode or Dual firewall DMZ Mode, and you have to select the type of transport and port number you wish to use before the deployment of the engine. Then, select and configure what type of business protocol that fits your company's needs. The configuration of the protocol depends on the type of protocol you use. Next, you have to create host and partner participants. Use these hosts and participants in creating business agreements. Lastly, you can create private processes. Private processes are internal processes that are connected to the BusinessConnect server, and send and receive information being passed over the public processes.

What is the difference between Single Server Mode and Dual firewall DMZ Mode?

Single Server Mode offers a minimal but secure and reliable security that can be deployed in your system. The Dual firewall DMZ Mode is a more secure deployment setting because you can place your DMZ behind your firewall. This means that you have a double security of data exchange since you have your firewall and DMZ securely check the data being exchanged. You can even add another firewall as your second firewall behind the DMZ for a more secure communication.

What are Hosts and Partners?

The host and the partner are the two elements that participate in the exchange of data. They are referred to as participants. The host is your company. It is configured to reflect your company unit and connected to your BusinessConnect B2B gateway. The partner is your partner company. It is configured to reflect your partner company unit and it is connected to its own B2B gateway. It's a huge advantage for TIBCO BusinessConnect users because BusinessConnect is capable of integrating applications even if the other company is using a different B2B solution, as long as requirements are met, such as using the same protocol.

What is a business agreement?

In order for the two trading partners to exchange data and perform business deals, the host and partner must establish an electronic B2B deal. This deal is called a business agreement in BusinessConnect. To configure the business agreement, you have to select the host and partner involved in the deal. Then, select the protocol common to both parties, and configure the security. You can even select the validity dates for the deal.

What are private and public processes?

A private process is an internal process in your company, which sends and receives data from your BusinessConnect server and communicates to the server using Rendezvous messaging. You can create a private process using TIBCO Designer. BusinessConnect is bundled with the BusinessConnect Plug-in which you can use to easily create business processes in TIBCO Designer. A public process is the one responsible for the exchange of data of both BusinessConnect servers across the Internet. It includes both BusinessConnect servers and the medium that connects these servers.

How is the transaction being conducted?

When you send a transaction to a BusinessConnect server, the transaction is sent via Rendezvous Certified Messaging (RVCM). The server listens to a subject name and waits for the message to arrive. A message is considered valid if it conforms to the structure specified in the agreement between the participants. That certain message is encrypted by the server before the server sends the it to the partner company. The message is then received by the partner's BusinessConnect server. The partner's BusinessConnect server decrypts the message and sends it to an RVCM subject name. The internal process of the partner company listens to that RVCM subject name, waiting for the message to arrive. When the message arrives, the data is processed and the partner company sends a response back to the host company via RVCM going through the servers.

The host subject names are called Initiator Request and Initiator Response, while the partner subject names are called Responder Request and Responder Response. The host sends a request, and waits for a response. The partner waits for the request, and sends the response after processing the request.

Conclusion

BusinessConnect is a great tool for reliable business-to-business communication. It supports numerous protocols and is easy to configure, making it a powerful tool to integrate with your trading partners.

Tibco EMS FAQ-1

Messaging Sequencing in Queues: When the message size is large, and when there are more messages with larger size, to reduce the load on the server, the sender sends the message in chunks and on receiver side to receive the messages in order, use message sequencing.

Difference between Load Balancing and fault Tolerant modes: Load balancing is done between 2 or more servers where the load is distributed between servers. whereas, fault tolerance is done between 2 servers where one server acts as a primary and the second server acts as a back up server for the primary server. In case of failure of primary server, the second server(back up server) becomes the primary server.

Load Balancing in Queues: There will be number of queue receivers and the messages are sent to the queues in round robin fashion thereby reducing the load.

Durable Topic: In durable topic, the message is first persisted on to the disk before it is published. Durable topics ensure the delivery of messages like queues. where as a regular topic receives the message only when it is active. If not active the message is lost.

Services of EMS server: Reliable, guaranteed,Transactional

Performance Tuning:Performance tuning can be done at EMS server level/Administrator level
In EMS it can be done using prefetch mechanism,thereby regulating the consumption of messages. The prefetch mechanism is avialable in both queues and topics
In Administrator, performance tuning is done by adjusting the count of the threads.also by setting the flow limit, activation limit, max limit.

Ways of creating a Web service: I believe there are 2 ways. using soap activity, using services. How to create them are posted in this site. Please go through it.

Why is load balancing not useful in topics: Because as one message is sent to all the subscribers that subscribe to the topic, there will be duplication of messages and there will be more disadvatages when used in topics.

How you do support: When there is an issue, every issue has a ticket number, first determine the criticality and based on the criticality we forward the issue to suitable departments, like developer, testing department etc.

When to use services/soap activity: When you have to use multiple transports, use services to build ur websevices, using soap activity you can configure only one transport.

Difference between Abstract WSDL and Concrete WSDL: Abstract WSDL consists of the structure of the message that is; what operation, what is the input and what is the ouput . Whereas in concrete WSDL has all the things that the abstract wsdl has in addition it has transport details.

max jobs, Activation Limit,flow Limit: Max Jobs is the maximum number of jobs thatMax jobs specify the number of process instances that are kept in memory while executing.
Activation Limit: Specifies that once a process instance is loaded and it must be placed in memory till it completes execution.
Flow Limit: maximum number of jobs that can be spawned before the process starter is suspended.

Acknowledgement modes: auto, client, dups_ok, explicit client ack, no acknowledgment, explicit_client_dups_ok ack,transitional, local transitional. Go through the articles in the site. I believe there is explaination for these.

Install TIBCO iProcess Sql Server Engine

The installation usually won’t success when you first install the iPE. If the installation failed, you can delete the installation directory; drop the swpro and swuser users and all the tables belong to them in Sql Server database. But don’t delete the swadmin and staffwar users in the OS. And then reinstall the iPE, it will success.

1. Create 3 user accounts “swpro”, “swadmin” and “swuser” (local to the computer) with password (wireformat-123). Assign local admin rights to these users.

2. 1. Then go to control panel->Administrative tools->Local Security Policy->Local policies (left pane) ->user right assignments

Here for three policies (act as part of OS, logon as a service, log on as a batch job), you have to add those three users mentioned above.

2.2. Go to ‘Component services’ in the Administrative Tools.

Component Services->Computer (left pane)->My Computer.

Right click on My Computer and go to Properties. In the COM Security tab. Click the Edit Limits button in the Access Permissions and add swpro, swadmin and swuser in the user names and check the Remote access checkbox.

Repeat the above step for the Edit Default in Access Permissions and also for Edit Limits and Edit Default in the Launch and Activation Permissions.

3. Logon as swpro (recommended) and install all the software needed for iProcess.

3.1 Install SQL server 2000 with service pack 4.

3.11. Create a new db for iProcess.

3.12. In the newly created DB create 3 logins (mentioned above) with same username and password. Find steps below.

a. Go to Securityà right click on login choose new Login.

b) Select server Roles and give all the roles

c) Select Database Access and select the database you have created and grant all roles.

Repeat these steps for all three users (swpro, swadmin, swuser)

3.2. In DB PropertiesàPermissions, check all the properties except Backup DB and Backup log

3.3 Create an ODBC (data source) for your newly created DB.

Got control panelàadministrative toolsàData Sources (ODBC) and create a new odbc in system DSN

(Select default database as the database that is created in the step 3.11 above)

4.0 Before I process server installation you need to install pthread.dll

Pthreads-w32-2.7.0.zip

4.1 Next install iProcess Engine with all options checked except “configure email plug-in" (This option can be selected if you want to configure the settings for iProcess Email plug-in)

5. Install JMS (Ignore this step if you already have the JMS installed on your system)

6.1. Open the iProcess Objects server from control panel and in memory tab; select ‘enable memory login’, select warning check box.

6.2. In disk log tab, set memory size to 100MB.

Restart your machine.

7. Type services.msc in run, check whether two staffware services are running or not.

8. Install iProcess windows client

9. Install iProcess modeler.

Unix Basic commands

Basic UNIX commands
Note: not all of these are actually part of UNIX itself, and you may not find them on all UNIX machines. But they

can all be used on turing in essentially the same way, by typing the command and hitting return. Note that some of

these commands are different on non-Solaris machines - see SunOS differences.
If you've made a typo, the easiest thing to do is hit CTRL-u to cancel the whole line. But you can also edit the

command line (see the guide to More UNIX).
UNIX is case-sensitive.
Files

* ls --- lists your files
ls -l --- lists your files in 'long format', which contains lots of useful information, e.g. the exact size of

the file, who owns the file and who has the right to look at it, and when it was last modified.
ls -a --- lists all files, including the ones whose filenames begin in a dot, which you do not always want to

see.
There are many more options, for example to list files by size, by date, recursively etc.
* more filename --- shows the first part of a file, just as much as will fit on one screen. Just hit the space

bar to see more or q to quit. You can use /pattern to search for a pattern.
* emacs filename --- is an editor that lets you create and edit a file. See the emacs page.
* mv filename1 filename2 --- moves a file (i.e. gives it a different name, or moves it into a different

directory (see below)
* cp filename1 filename2 --- copies a file
* rm filename --- removes a file. It is wise to use the option rm -i, which will ask you for confirmation before

actually deleting anything. You can make this your default by making an alias in your .cshrc file.
* diff filename1 filename2 --- compares files, and shows where they differ
* wc filename --- tells you how many lines, words, and characters there are in a file
* chmod options filename --- lets you change the read, write, and execute permissions on your files. The default

is that only you can look at them and change them, but you may sometimes want to change these permissions. For

example, chmod o+r filename will make the file readable for everyone, and chmod o-r filename will make it unreadable

for others again. Note that for someone to be able to actually look at the file the directories it is in need to be

at least executable. See help protection for more details.
* File Compression
o gzip filename --- compresses files, so that they take up much less space. Usually text files compress to

about half their original size, but it depends very much on the size of the file and the nature of the contents.

There are other tools for this purpose, too (e.g. compress), but gzip usually gives the highest compression rate.

Gzip produces files with the ending '.gz' appended to the original filename.
o gunzip filename --- uncompresses files compressed by gzip.
o gzcat filename --- lets you look at a gzipped file without actually having to gunzip it (same as gunzip

-c). You can even print it directly, using gzcat filename | lpr
* printing
o lpr filename --- print. Use the -P option to specify the printer name if you want to use a printer other

than your default printer. For example, if you want to print double-sided, use 'lpr -Pvalkyr-d', or if you're at

CSLI, you may want to use 'lpr -Pcord115-d'. See 'help printers' for more information about printers and their

locations.
o lpq --- check out the printer queue, e.g. to get the number needed for removal, or to see how many other

files will be printed before yours will come out
o lprm jobnumber --- remove something from the printer queue. You can find the job number by using lpq.

Theoretically you also have to specify a printer name, but this isn't necessary as long as you use your default

printer in the department.
o genscript --- converts plain text files into postscript for printing, and gives you some options for

formatting. Consider making an alias like alias ecop 'genscript -2 -r \!* | lpr -h -Pvalkyr' to print two pages on

one piece of paper.
o dvips filename --- print .dvi files (i.e. files produced by LaTeX). You can use dviselect to print only

selected pages. See the LaTeX page for more information about how to save paper when printing drafts.

Directories
Directories, like folders on a Macintosh, are used to group files together in a hierarchical structure.

* mkdir dirname --- make a new directory
* cd dirname --- change directory. You basically 'go' to another directory, and you will see the files in that

directory when you do 'ls'. You always start out in your 'home directory', and you can get back there by typing 'cd'

without arguments. 'cd ..' will get you one level up from your current position. You don't have to walk along step

by step - you can make big leaps or avoid walking around by specifying pathnames.
* pwd --- tells you where you currently are.

Finding things

* ff --- find files anywhere on the system. This can be extremely useful if you've forgotten in which directory

you put a file, but do remember the name. In fact, if you use ff -p you don't even need the full name, just the

beginning. This can also be useful for finding other things on the system, e.g. documentation.
* grep string filename(s) --- looks for the string in the files. This can be useful a lot of purposes, e.g.

finding the right file among many, figuring out which is the right version of something, and even doing serious

corpus work. grep comes in several varieties (grep, egrep, and fgrep) and has a lot of very flexible options. Check

out the man pages if this sounds good to you.

About other people

* w --- tells you who's logged in, and what they're doing. Especially useful: the 'idle' part. This allows you

to see whether they're actually sitting there typing away at their keyboards right at the moment.
* who --- tells you who's logged on, and where they're coming from. Useful if you're looking for someone who's

actually physically in the same building as you, or in some other particular location.
* finger username --- gives you lots of information about that user, e.g. when they last read their mail and

whether they're logged in. Often people put other practical information, such as phone numbers and addresses, in a

file called .plan. This information is also displayed by 'finger'.
* last -1 username --- tells you when the user last logged on and off and from where. Without any options, last

will give you a list of everyone's logins.
* talk username --- lets you have a (typed) conversation with another user
* write username --- lets you exchange one-line messages with another user
* elm --- lets you send e-mail messages to people around the world (and, of course, read them). It's not the

only mailer you can use, but the one we recommend. See the elm page, and find out about the departmental mailing

lists (which you can also find in /user/linguistics/helpfile).

About your (electronic) self

* whoami --- returns your username. Sounds useless, but isn't. You may need to find out who it is who forgot to

log out somewhere, and make sure *you* have logged out.
* finger & .plan files
of course you can finger yourself, too. That can be useful e.g. as a quick check whether you got new mail. Try

to create a useful .plan file soon. Look at other people's .plan files for ideas. The file needs to be readable for

everyone in order to be visible through 'finger'. Do 'chmod a+r .plan' if necessary. You should realize that this

information is accessible from anywhere in the world, not just to other people on turing.
* passwd --- lets you change your password, which you should do regularly (at least once a year). See the LRB

guide and/or look at help password.
* ps -u yourusername --- lists your processes. Contains lots of information about them, including the process

ID, which you need if you have to kill a process. Normally, when you have been kicked out of a dialin session or

have otherwise managed to get yourself disconnected abruptly, this list will contain the processes you need to kill.

Those may include the shell (tcsh or whatever you're using), and anything you were running, for example emacs or

elm. Be careful not to kill your current shell - the one with the number closer to the one of the ps command you're

currently running. But if it happens, don't panic. Just try again Smiley If you're using an X-display you may have

to kill some X processes before you can start them again. These will show only when you use ps -efl, because they're

root processes.
* kill PID --- kills (ends) the processes with the ID you gave. This works only for your own processes, of

course. Get the ID by using ps. If the process doesn't 'die' properly, use the option -9. But attempt without that

option first, because it doesn't give the process a chance to finish possibly important business before dying. You

may need to kill processes for example if your modem connection was interrupted and you didn't get logged out

properly, which sometimes happens.
* quota -v --- show what your disk quota is (i.e. how much space you have to store files), how much you're

actually using, and in case you've exceeded your quota (which you'll be given an automatic warning about by the

system) how much time you have left to sort them out (by deleting or gzipping some, or moving them to your own

computer).
* du filename --- shows the disk usage of the files and directories in filename (without argument the current

directory is used). du -s gives only a total.
* last yourusername --- lists your last logins. Can be a useful memory aid for when you were where, how long

you've been working for, and keeping track of your phonebill if you're making a non-local phonecall for dialling in.

Connecting to the outside world

* nn --- allows you to read news. It will first let you read the news local to turing, and then the remote news.

If you want to read only the local or remote news, you can use nnl or nnr, respectively. To learn more about nn type

nn, then \tty{:man}, then \tty{=.*}, then \tty{Z}, then hit the space bar to step through the manual. Or look at the

man page. Or check out the hypertext nn FAQ - probably the easiest and most fun way to go.
* rlogin hostname --- lets you connect to a remote host
* telnet hostname --- also lets you connect to a remote host. Use rlogin whenever possible.
* ftp hostname --- lets you download files from a remote host which is set up as an ftp-server. This is a common

method for exchanging academic papers and drafts. If you need to make a paper of yours available in this way, you

can (temporarily) put a copy in /user/ftp/pub/TMP. For more permanent solutions, ask Emma. The most important

commands within ftp are get for getting files from the remote machine, and put for putting them there (mget and mput

let you specify more than one file at once). Sounds straightforward, but be sure not to confuse the two, especially

when your physical location doesn't correspond to the direction of the ftp connection you're making. ftp just

overwrites files with the same filename. If you're transferring anything other than ASCII text, use binary mode.
* lynx --- lets you browse the web from an ordinary terminal. Of course you can see only the text, not the

pictures. You can type any URL as an argument to the G command. When you're doing this from any Stanford host you

can leave out the .stanford.edu part of the URL when connecting to Stanford URLs. Type H at any time to learn more

about lynx, and Q to exit.

Miscellaneous tools

* webster word --- looks up the word in an electronic version of Webster's dictionary and returns the

definition(s)
* date --- shows the current date and time.
* cal --- shows a calendar of the current month. Use e.g., 'cal 10 1995' to get that for October 95, or 'cal

1995' to get the whole year.

TIBCO BW

TIBCO BW -FAQS

1) What is the use of service container?
Ans) In the latest version of TIBCO Active Matrix Business Works a new feature called Service container is added. In this service container we can add number of EAR files and run all the services simultaneously. With the Service container feature we can add and upgrade processes without bringing down other running processes.

2) In how any ways can we create EAR files.
Ans) We can build EAR files in 2 ways. One method is using the Enterprise Archive pallete in the Tibco designer and adding the process archive we can build EAR file.
Other method is from the cmd prompt. We use the command appmanage and buildear.

3) What is Schema and why do we create schema.
Ans) Schema is used to create a XML schema file in which we add the variables which we want to use in our designer process. We can create the elements under which we can add the typed variables. The structure formed will be in the form of tree structure.

4) What is the use of confirm activity.
Ans) Confirm activity is used to confirm the success of a activity that have confirmable messages. For example if certain process starts on reception of a message then if that process starts the confirm activity sends a confirm message to the sender of the message.

5) What are the different modes of tibco BW installation.
Ans) There are 3 modes installation . They are a) GUI b) console c) silent

6) When we save a project what files are created under the saved project folder.
Ans) In that folder we see the Aeschema folder, all processes create in that project and the vcrepo.dat file.

7) What are the contents of vcrepo.dat
Ans) This files contains the display name , RV encodings and description.

8) What is grouping activity?
Ans) Grouping activity is used to group certain activities used in the designer so that we can loop those activities and iterate the group with conditions.

9) What is the condition for a process in order to build the EAR file.
Ans) We need to have a process starter.

10) How can we design exception handling?
Ans) The basic method is by routing the process to another sub process whenever error occurs by using the error transition.

11) What is the use of Render XML pallet.
Ans) It is used to create a XML file by creating the tags used in the xml file.
12) What are the elements in the WSDL file.
Ans) In abstract WSDl file we have the information about the messages ( request, reply) port type, operation. In concrete in addition to above we have the transport information.

13) What is the use of global variables?
Ans) Global variables are useful in order to provide dynamic input at the run time.

14) What is custom activity?
Ans) Custom activity is useful when we want others to use our process and not allow them to view the contents of the process. We can add this process into our MY Pallete section. We can directly use this process by dragging it into our process.

15) In web service in how many ways can we create connections.
Ans) 2 ways. HTTP and JMS.

16) How does the file poller activity works.
Ans) This is a starter activity which starts the process whenever there is update for the file that is specified.

17) What is the use of project template?
Ans) In project template we can save our standard processes that we want to use in future. These processes are generally the ones which have the commonly used activities.

18) What is the optimum maximum number of connections in JDBC?
Ans) 10

19) What is sub process and what is its use?
Ans) Whenever we call a process from another process , the called processbecomes the subprocess. Sub process helps in reducing the complexity of the design by assigning the activity in other process.

20) What is TRA.
Ans) Tibco Runtime Agent is the main frame work for all the tibco softwares. It provides the runtime agent and monitoring agent. All the libraries required by the designs are provided by TRA.

21) What are the process variables that are available to all activities as inputs.
Ans) global variables and process context.

22) What are break points?
Ans) Break points are used to check the inputs and outputs of each activity during testing the design so that we can debug our design. We can place the check points for all activities on input and output side.

23) What re the encoding techniques in WSDL?
Ans ) Encoded and literal.
24) What are the conditions in transitions?
Ans) Success, Success with condition, Success with no condition and error.

25) What are the different variables in BW?
Ans) Global variables, Shared variables, process variables and job shared variables.
26. Explain the processes flow of your latest project by including activities.
ans: for various service implementation I designed processes using various BW activities like JMS Queue Receiver, XML Parser
27. What are the differences between the versions 2.x and 5.2?
ans:
type 2.x 5.2
deployment In 2.x deployment is done in the designer Here deployment is done using administrator tool
Name spaces Name spaces are prefixed with tib No tib in name spaces
pallets Extra pallets added
Iterate-reset At the end of each iterate the output is not reset Here the output is reset after each iteration
installation Here all the components like BW,ADB,FILE etc come as a package Here we will have to install each component separately
File type All files are .dat. we have to convert these manually Multi format file are available so that we do not have to convert the dat files

28. What are the activities you worked on?
Ans: JMS queue receiver,confirm,checkpoint,XML parser,call process,JDBC update,SOAP,HTTP.
write to log - widely used.
Assign.

29. What is the inspector activity does?
Ans: the inspector activity is used to obtain the output of any activity or all the activities and process variables.
Scenario: You can use the inspector activity to write the output of any activity or process variable in the current process. Activities and process variables in a subprocess are not available to the Inspector activity (but the output of a Call Process activity can be written using the Inspector activity). If you wish to obtain the output from one or more activities or process variables in a subprocess, place the Inspector activity in the process definition of the subprocess.

30.Can you tell me at least four starter activities and when they get executed?
Ans:
1) Adapter subscriber, adap request response server :-When ever a message comes into a destination queue or network, listerns to a request from a adapter and sends a respose back to that adapter
2) File poller :- polls for any changes that occur in the file and with any change grabs the whole file.
3) Timer:- receive notification Starts a process on the time specified ex: before JDBC QUERY, starts a process on receiving of data from a notify activity.
4) http receiver :-Starts a process based on a request from http server.
5) Jms queue receiver, jms topic subscriber :- Starts a process when ever a new message comes into the specified queue, starts a process when ever there is a new message in the specified topic.
6) Receive mail :- The Receive Mail process starter polls a POP3 mail server for new mail. When new mail is detected and retrieved, the Receive Mail process starter starts a new process for the process definition it resides in and passes the mail data to the next activity in the process flow.
7) Rv subscriber:- The Rendezvous Subscriber process starter creates a process when a TIBCO Rendezvous message on the given subject is received.
Cool Rmi server :- The RMI Server process starter registers the specified remote object name with the specified registry server and then creates process instances to handle incoming requests for the object. The process definition acts as the implementation of the specified object.
9) Soap event source :- The SOAP Event Source process starter creates a process instance for incoming SOAP requests. SOAP is a standard protocol for invoking web services. This allows you to create a web service using process definitions.
At runtime, a client can retrieve the WSDL file for a process containing this process starter using an HTTP request. Once the WSDL is retrieved, the client can perform a SOAP request to invoke the web service.
10)Tcp receiver The TCP Receiver process starter starts a new process when a client requests a TCP connection.

31. What is the purpose of JMS Queue receiver activity and Queue sender activity?
Ans: Starts a process when ever a new message comes into the specified queue.
A queue sender activity sends messages into the specified queue.

32. What are acknowledgement modes and where do you set them and what is the applicability of each mode?
Ans:
The acknowledge mode for incoming messages. Can be one of the following:
• Auto — the message is automatically acknowledged when it is received.
• Client — the message will be acknowledged at a later point by using the Confirm activity. If the message is not confirmed before the process instance ends, the message is redelivered and a new process instance is created to handle the new incoming message. Ensure that your process definition confirms the message when using this acknowledge mode.
• TIBCO EMS Explicit Client Acknowledge — this mode behaves exactly the same as the Client mode, except the session is not blocked and one session can handle all incoming messages.
• Dups OK — the message is acknowledged automatically when it is received. JMS provides this mode for lazy acknowledgement, but TIBCO BusinessWorks acknowledges messages upon receipt.
• Transactional — this mode is used when a transaction that can process JMS messages is included in the process definition. The message is acknowledged when the transaction commits. See TIBCO BusinessWorks Process Design Guide for more information about creating transactions that JMS activities can participate in.

33. What is a check point activity and confirm activity?
Ans: A checkpoint saves the current process data and state so that it can be recovered at a later time in the event of a failure. If a process engine fails, all process instances can be recovered and resume execution at the location of their last checkpoint in the process definition.

The Confirm activity confirms any confirmable messages received by the process instance. For example, if a process is started because of the receipt of an RVCM message, the Confirm activity can send a confirmation message to the publisher of the RVCM message

34. What happens if you use check point activity first and confirm next?
ans:
In the case of confirmable messages , you must consider the consequences of performing a checkpoint before or after a Confirm activity.
If the checkpoint is taken before the Confirm activity, then a crash occurs after a checkpoint but before a confirm, the original message is resent. In this case, the restarted process can no longer send the confirmation. However, a new process is started to handle the resent message, and you can implement your process to handle the restarted and new processes appropriately.
If the checkpoint is taken after a Confirm activity, there is potential for a crash to occur after the Confirm but before the checkpoint. In this case, the message is confirmed and therefore not redelivered. The process instance is not restarted, because the crash occurred before the checkpoint.
You must consider the type of processing your process definition performs to determine when a checkpoint is appropriate if your process definition receives confirmable messages.

35. What is the potential problem with JMS Queue requestor?
Ans:
When we specify a reply to queue there is a chance of other processes sending messages to the same queue and the jms queue requestor interpreting that as the actual response and sending this wrong message to the client.

36. What is the other JMS activity you would use to address the problem?
Ans:
Get jms queue message. This incorporates a message ID to identify the true message.

37. What are the activities you used to publish the messages from BW process to network on RV?
Ans: publish rv message activity (along with the shared resource – rv transport).

38. What is the transition in BW?
Ans: to move the data from one activity to another or when conditions exist on the data.

39. What are the different kinds of condition types you can have in transition? Explain Them
Ans:
a)Success :- Take this transition unconditionally. That is, always transition to the activity the transition points to, if the activity completes successfully.
This is the default condition for transitions.
b)Success with condition :- Specify a custom condition using XPath. If the activity completes successfully, and the condition you create evaluates to true, the transition is taken to the activity it points to.
You can type in an XPath condition, and you can use the XPath formula builder to drag and drop XPath expressions and data into the condition. See Chapter 9, XPath for more information about specifying XPath conditions and using the XPath formula builder.
c)Success if no matching condition :- Take this transition when the activity completes successfully, but only if no other transitions are taken. This is useful when multiple transitions with conditions are drawn to other activities. This condition type can be used to handle any cases not handled by the conditions on the other transitions.
d)Error :- Take this transition if there is an error during processing of the activity.

40. What is Generate Error activity? What the applications of it ?
Ans:This activity generates an error and causes an immediate transition to any error transitions. If there are no error transitions, the process instance halts execution. This activity is useful in a group or in a called process. If you would like to catch and raise your own error conditions, you can use this activity to do so.

41. What are the shared variables and process variables?
Ans:
Process variables: Process variables are data structures available to the activities in the process. You can define your own process variables and assign values to them in your process definition. Process variables are defined on the Process Variables tab of the Process Definition resource. And assigning values to these kind of variables is done using the assign activity.
Shared variables: A Shared Variable resource allows you to share data across process instances. All process instances can read and update the data stored in a shared variable. This type of shared variable is useful if you wish to pass data across process instances or if you wish to make a common set of information available to all process instances.

42. What is XPATH?
Ans: isa XML based path language used to navigate the XML document and manipulate the data

43. What is XSD?
Ans: XML schema definition.

44. What is name space in XSD?
Ans: A name conflict will occur when two different documents use the same element names. So each element is given a unique namespace.

45 what is aweb-service?
Ans: application or a network responding to some remote web-request.

46what isw a wsdl?what are different types of wsdl?
Ans:Web-services run on wsdl,it defines structure of schema.There are two types of wsdl
Abstract wsdl:-Used on server side,contains request,response and type of operation performed.
concrete wsdl:-used on client side,contains abstract wsdl and transport used.


47. What are the modes of installation of tibco bw applns?
a. GUI mode
b. Console
c. Silent mode
48. What is the thread count in tibco administrator?
a. 8-32 threads for BW engines
b. For http connections-10/75
c. JMS-it’s a single thread model
49. What is Max jobs, Flow limit, and Activation limit?
a. Max jobs: Max jobs specify the number of process instances that are kept in memory while executing.
b. Flow Limit: it is the max number of jobs that can be spawned before the process starter is suspended.
c. Activation Limit: Specifies that once a process instance is loaded and it must be placed in memory till it completes execution.
50. What are tibco best practices-users?
a. User ”tibco” should be master of all applications.
b. User “tibcou” should have read only access to tibco applications and have read write access to logs owned by developer groups.
51. In how many ways can you deploy EAR file?
a. Using tibco administrator GUI
b. Use Appmanage utility to deploy EAR file into targeted domains
52. Whether to use check point/confirm activity first?
a. BW doc/general palette/checkpoint/confirm
53. What information can be found in the appmanage.batch file?
a. Component paths, service instance paths that is required to run AppManage utility
54. What is difference between EMS and RV?
a. Ems is centralized where as RV is bus based
55. What are the 2 message transport types?
a. Ems has 2 message transport types
i. Point-to-point: queues
ii. Pub-sub : topics
56. What is the diff between tibco adapter and BW component?
a. Adapters are connectors that use a messaging channel that can be configured over source/target systems which can be used in Pub,Sub or Replyrequest mode. BW components are designer, administrator, bw engine.
57. Why are routes used?
a. When we have to send messages from one server to another.
58. What parameters would be used to control storage in EMS?
a. Flow control property
59. What are the diff types of messaging services in RV?
a. RV
b. RVCM
c. RVCMQ
d. RVRD
60. Which transport is used between hawk agent and hawk microagent?
a. Rv
61. What re the three transport types available when configuring a tibco component?
a. HTTp, RV,local
62. What is the standard file extension of deployment files?
a. EAR
63. How many ways are there to move files between 2 secured UNIX servers
a. Sftp /https
64. What information can be found in the tibco bw tra files?
a. Service instance machine names, fault-tolerant settings, java heap sizes, jmv lib paths , repository URL
65. Can you give one example for sync and async operation?
a. Sync-request-reply and req-reply invocation services
b. Async-publication and subscription services
66. What are the different types of queues?
a. Static-created by the user
b. Dynamic- created by the sender/receiver application at run time.
c. Temporary- created by receiver to submit the response to EMS server/Sender to get the messages.
67. What are the various types of application property types in EMS?
a. Boolean, byte, short, char, int, long, float, double, string.
68. What are event queues?
a. An event queue contains received but undelivered messages, periodic timers, and state change callbacks etc.
69. What are the wire formats supported by file adapter?
a. AE,XML,RV
70. What is job shared variable and shared variable?
a. Job shared variable- is used to share the value of the variable between the main process and the sub process.
b. Shared variable- is used to share the value of the variable between two processes
71. What is the difference between jdbc and adb
a. Jdbc is a collection of activities that can be used for custom operations
b. ADB is an adapter which is used to capture the events and take action, this has pub and sub mechanisms, pub is used to capture the events and publish the messages and sub will be used to upsert the operations.
72. How is reduce the load on ems server?
a. Using maxbytes, flow limit, prefetch mechanisms
73. What is a tibco domain?
a. It’s a collection of software and hardware components that are used for business process integration.
74. What is tibco hawk agent?
a. It’s a independent process that monitors the status of the applications.
75. What are the resources that get included in the EAR file, created by the TIBCO designer?
a. EAR file contain
i. Local project resources
ii. Library builder resources
iii. Alias library resource files
iv. Files referred in classpath of designer
v. All the files under the designer installation directory.
76. What is tcp and udp
a. Tcp is used for client request. Udp is used for service call.
77. What is the difference between RVD and RVRD
a. RVD is used to route with in a subnet
b. RVRD is used to route through different subnet.
78. What are message selectors?
a. Message selectors are used to filter messages based on expression syntax. This reduces the processing overhead from the application.
79. What is a Home Queue and what is a Routed Queue in EMS routes?
a. Home Queue: The global queue sitting in the EMS server, where Route is being created.
b. Routed Queue: the global queue sitting in the EMS server where the queue name is referring to route.
80. What is the EMS maximum message size?
a. The maximum message size is 512 MB.
81. What are the delivery modes supported by EMS server?
a. EMS supports 2 delivery modes
i. Persistent
ii. Non-persistent
iii. Reliable.
82. What are the message types supported by EMS?
a. Text
b. XML
c. Bytes
d. Stream
e. Simple
f. Object
g. ObjectRef
h. Map
83. What are the wildcard characters supported by EMS?
a. * - means that any token can be in place of *.
b. > - matches any destination name i.e., it matches one or more trailing elements.
You can subscribe to wildcard topics but can’t publish.
You can neither send nor receive from wildcard queue names
84. What is the default storage limit for destinations?
a. Setting the flowControl property on a destination but specifying no value causes the server to use a default value of 256KB.
85. What is the syntax to create bridges?
a. Create bridge bridge_name source=destination_type:name target=destination_type:name
86. How do avoid/stop creation of dynamic queues/topics?
a. By deleting the parent queue “>”
87. Explain what do you understand by TRA?
a. TIBCO Runtime Agent is a bundle of tibco software and third-party software that is needed to run many TIBCO applications such as TIBCO Business works and Adapters
88. What are the components installed when you install TRA?
a. TIBCO designer
b. Java Runtime Environment
c. TIBCO Hawk Agent
d. TIBCO Rendezvous
e. TIBCO Domain Utility
f. TIBCO Wrapper etc.
89. Explain TIBCO Hawk Agent?
a. It is an autonomous process that resides on each computer on which TRA is installed. Hawk Agent uses a set of rules called rulebases to configure system management, status and automation tasks.
90. What is the use of TIBCO Wrapper utility
a. It allows deployment of a TIBCO product or TIBCO Adapter SDK based custom adapter as a service.
91. How is load balancing done in Randezvous?
a. Using distributed queues
92. What protocol does RV uses to communicate with in a subnet and outside the subnet?
a. UDP within a subnet
b. TCP outside subnet.
93. What is the difference between technical and functional adapters?
a. A
b. F
94. What is the use of secured queues and topics?
a. Setting ‘secure’ property to queues/topics can restrict unauthorized users from publishing/sending and subscribing/receiving the messages.
95. What is Publish by value and Publish by reference?
a. In Publish by Value, all the specified columns in the source table are copied into the Publishing table.
b. In Publish by reference, only the specified key column values are copied to the publishing table.
96. What are the services available in Adapter?
a. Publication service
b. Subscription service
c. Request-response service

Tibco Admin

TIBCO ADMIN -FAQS
What is a TIBCO Domain?
A: Domain is a collection of hardware and software components that are used for business process integration. The domain defines the TIBCO BusinessWorks environment. Each domain must contain one and only one administration server. Each domain must have a unique domain name. Each domain may contain one or more machines but no single machine can belong to multiple domains. Each machine may have more than one type of software component.

What is a deployment?
A deployment is a completed configured instance of an integration or project. TIBCO Designer is used to configure projects and deployments in current version. In the future, TIBCO Administrator will be used to manage deployment of projects.

What is the main responsibilities of the Admin server?
It manages data storage for the Admin
It manages transport options for applications
It enforces security for the domian

What is TIBCO HAWK agent?
It is the independent process that monitors applications and systems utility.

What are the Scripting utilities?
There are two types of scripting utilities.
They are
1. Buildear
2.Appmanage

What are the components of the TIBCO Admin? What is its use?
Admin server: It manages resource in Admi domian
Admin GUI: It [provides web browser interface. It allows to configure users and applications, deploys applications, monitor process and machines in admin domain.

Can we run multiple administrators in the same domain?
No. Only one administration server is installed and configured for use per domain.

What is the default port where admin runs?
Port: 8080
Host: Localhost

What is UDDI module?
Universal, description, discovery and integration. It creates connections between uddi servers and web services contained in the server. If you grant permissions then you can publish web services information through uddi servers.

What is Resouce management?
It creates application domian.
It can customize machine display.
It displays information about machines and process on machine.

What is application domain?
This applicatio stores the data separetely or independently in a repository from the admin domian repository.

What is an Application Archieve?
It provides information about the enterprise archieve file including package name, version, description and creation date.

Can we change the adapter from one domain to another?
Yes, but you will need to uninstall the existing adapter that has joined the current domain and then reinstall the adapter and join it to the new domain. You will also be able to change the domain info directly using Domain Utility .

How to view tracing results for a process engine?
Got to Application Management
click on All service instances,
click on the process engine name
tracing tab, go to details

What is deployment choice?
When configuring adminstration domian , you can set how the admin server creates and stores application data.
1. Local application data
2. Server based application data

What are the versions of TIBCO Admin?
There are two types of two versions.
1) Repository Edition
2) Enterprise Edition.

Can we change the domain for one machine to another later?
Yes, you can add/remove machine from domain using Damain Utility.

What are the restrictions of using TIBCO Admin GUI via secondary server?
We cannot perform user management, deploy applications or perform any other activity for which read write access is required.

What do you have in the User management module?
Users
Roles
Security

What is TIBCO Administrator ?
TIBCO Administrator supports security administration as well as monitoring and management of processes and machines.
TIBCO Administrator consists of the TIBCO Administration Server and the web browser based TIBCO Administrator GUI.

What are TIBCO Administrator Modules ?
User Management
Resource Management
Application Management