How to create a Custom palette with Custom activities ?

Creating a Custom palette with Custom activities.

1. Create a Custom palette

    a) Select Palettes > My Palettes > New Palette from TIBCO Designer menu.
    b) Specify a name in the dialog that appears
    c) Custom palette appears in palette panel.

2. Drag and drop custom activity to custom palette.
3. Save the project

Distributing custom palette

1. Locate the file(s) containing the custom palette(s) which, by default, are stored in the location specified in the User Palette Directory foeld of the General User Preferences dialog. The file extension of the custom palette is .mypalette.

2. Copy the .mypalette file to the custom palette directory on the machines to use the custome palette. An installation program may be created to perform this step so that users can easily install the custom palettes.

3. Start TIBCO Designer and click the MyPalettes tab to see the custom palette. If TIBCO Designer is already running, click on Palettes > My Palettes > Reload Palettes from the menu to retrieve the new custom palette.

• Custom activities behave like any other activity in TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks. The name of the Custom Activity and the name of the process definition in which the Custom Activity is included should be unique. If names are the same, input and output schemas are not displayed.
• Global Variables used in Custom Activity are automatically added to the Global Variable list in the project (if they are not included yet).
• When tracing is enabled, the trace information for activities executing within a custom activity is written to a log file. 

How to create 'Custom Activity' in Active Matrix Business Works ?

TIBCO BW > General Activities >  "Custom Activity"  Configuration

A process definition can be packaged into a custom activity that hides the implementation details of the process from the user.

Steps for creating a custom activity.

1. Create a folder (uniquely named is strongly recommended)

2. Create a process definition

3. Optionally, create output schema to the process definition Start activity.

4. Implement business logic for process definition.

5. Optionally, specify input schema for the End activity in the process definition and mapping.

6. In the project panel, click on the root node of the project, then select the General Activity palette in the palette panel.

7. Create a Custom Activity resource.

8. Click on Browse button to select the process definition.

9. Click Apply.

10.Take one new process definition to use this Custom Activity resource which is configured in previous steps.

(By drag & drop this configured Custom Activity resource cannot use in new process definition, we need to copy the configured Custom Activity resource and past inside the new process definition)

11.Once this done,then the resource is loaded into the new process definition,so now we can run this process.

Any resources referenced by the process definition in a custom activity are automatically included in the custom activity. 

Dynamically called subprocesses are not known at design time, and therefore are not referenced by the process definition. 

Therefore, dynamically called subprocesses cannot be used by a process definition within a custom activity.

Only process definition that do not have a process starters can be referenced by a custom activity.

Global variables used within the process definitions referenced by custom activities are automatically added to the global variable list of the project when the activity is added to a process definition.

Thus a naming convention for Global variables should be specified.

WSDL or XSD files are not automtically included when the process definition is placed in a custom activity. 

WSDL and XSD files must be made available to any user of custom activity.

TIBCO Admin -Transport options local / rv / http

When TIBCO Administrator deploys an application, it creates an application repository which contains information about the application configuration.

We can view and change certain aspects of the application repository.
 

TIBCO Admin -Transport  options local / rv / http

In TIBCO Admin , browse new ear file and  go to the path "Edit Application Configuration > Advanced tab"

There are two sections

Global Variables
TIBCO BusinessWorks and Adapters Deployment Repository Instance    

under the section "TIBCO BusinessWorks and Adapters Deployment Repository Instance" there is Transport drop down box having the options local ,rv and http

This transport is that the administration server uses to communicate with the client application.

•  local

By default, the transport is set to local. This means that the application repository will be sent to the target machine. This allows the application to run independently of the administration server.

If you change the transport from local to another value, the application repository will not be pushed to the target machine, and the application will communicate with the administration server at runtime.
 

The local choice is supported only if the target machines have installed TIBCO Runtime Agent 5.3 or later.

•   rv

If rv selected, the client application will use TIBCO Rendezvous to communicate with the administration server.
 

• http

If selected, the client application will use HTTP to communicate with the administration server.

If administration domain is not initially enabled for HTTPS, and there are deployed applications in the domain that use HTTP to connect to the application repository, the service instances will not restart after they are shut down. In this case, you must redeploy each service instance after changing the transport to HTTPS.
 

The parameter  HTTP URL, HTTPS URL  is the URL on which the client attempts to connect to the server. What displays depends on whether you configured the server for HTTPS

Scenario - web services / Performance Tuning / work load

We have created web service as server (starter activity 'soap event source') process.

How many  number of  incoming HTTP requests (concurrent i.e.occurring at the same time) that can be handled by this web service  ? or  How can we define the workload for this process ?

Answer :

Workload can define by setting the following properties in bwengine.tra file:

bw.plugin.http.server.minProcessors
bw.plugin.http.server.maxProcessors

Setting maxProcessors to 100, means  upto 100 requests can be accepted concurrently.

 Engine.ThreadCount

To improve the ability to execute process instances concurrently, more engine threads are required.

The number of engine threads to be allocated can be set using the property Engine.ThreadCount. The default value is 8.

Engine.StepCount

Set the property, Engine.StepCount, to specify the maximum number of execution steps for a job, unless in a transaction or when the ActivationLimit is set. The default value is 20.

A low value of StepCount results in frequent thread switches. This is an overhead, especially when the number of execution steps for most jobs is high.

bw.plugin.http.client.ResponseThreadPool


To specify the size of the thread pool used by the Request-Reply activity on the web service client side, set the properties: 

bw.plugin.http.client.ResponseThreadPool
bw.plugin.http.client.ResponseThreadPool.type

As the thread pool is created when the engine starts, use a reasonable number to specify the size of the ResponseThreadPool for your system. A high value results in extra resources being allocated which may never be used.

What is SOAPAction ? or What it specifies ?

The SOAP Action HTTP header is defined by the SOAP specification, and it indicates the intent of the SOAP HTTP request.

SOAP Action value is completely arbitrary, and it's intended to tell the HTTP server what the SOAP message wants to do before the HTTP server decodes the XML.