White Papers

TIBCO Vs. WebMethods

Tibco Active Enterprise

Tibco Active Enterprise is suitable for any application developed in C++/Java/pearl. TIB/Rendezvous software makes it easy to create distributed applications that exchange data across a network.

sTIB/Rendezvous software supports many hardware and software platforms, so programs running on many different kinds of computers on a network can communicate seamlessly.

The following are some features of the software:

Not server based
TIB/Rendezvous message delivery is a decentralized, stream oriented, peer-to-peer architecture. The TIB/Rendezvous daemon completes the information pathway between the TIB/Rendezvous program process across the network.
Destination address
This is a part of message and can be changed dynamically.
Portable
The network since it is decentralized.
Easy deployment
Once the coding is done, you don’t have to worry about the deployment. You just need to run the application, rather than going to the server, doing the settings, making necessary changes in the code and compiling it again.

Information Exchange

Messages (Standard Unit For Information Exchange)
All data that enters or leaves a program, process, or thread through the TIB/Rendezvous daemon must be encapsulated in the fields of a message. Programs can manipulate messages even before opening the TIB/Rendezvous environment.
Unified data representation
TIB/Rendezvous software uses a unified data representation to exchange messages among all supported platforms. Each message exists as a byte sequence in TIB/Rendezvous wire format—a uniform representation suitable for network communication among diverse hardware, operating system, and programming language platforms.
Data independence
TIB/Rendezvous self-describing data messages promote data independence; producers and consumers of data can communicate even if they do not share the same internal representations for data. Communicating programs can run on different hardware architectures, even though they use different bit order, byte alignment or numeric representations.
Reliability
TIB/Rendezvous software provides reliable communications between programs, while hiding the burdensome details of network communication and packet transfer from the programmer. It takes care of segmenting and recombining large messages, acknowledging packet receipts, retransmitting lost packets, and arranging packets in the correct order. TIB/Rendezvous software uses proprietary, reliable multicast protocols to deliver messages despite brief network glitches.
Supports both Publish/Subscribe and Request/reply
Self-Describing Data
Messages need not to be predefined (In webmethods’ events, including the arguments are predefined in the server)

Events

TIB/Rendezvous software recognizes three classes of events.

Message – An inbound message has arrived.
Timer – A timer interval has elapsed.
I/O – An I/O socket is ready.

Development

TIB/Rendezvous software includes several programming language interfaces, which are efficient, easy to use, and compatible with most other libraries (including window systems).

There is a lot of flexibility such as the ability to code with network APIs (such as TCP/IP sockets). It is also easier than programming with those APIs, since:

TIB/Rendezvous software eliminates the need for programs to locate clients or determine network addresses.
TIB/Rendezvous software simplifies the development of distributed application systems by hiding the networking details.
TIB/Rendezvous software makes it easy to develop resilient systems because redundant data producers are transparent to consumers.
TIB/Rendezvous software is thread-safe, so you can use it with multi-threaded programs.
TIB/Rendezvous programs can publish multicast messages to distribute information quickly and reliably to many consumers.
TIB/Rendezvous programs can use request/reply interactions, such as queries.
TIB/Rendezvous programs are location independent, and port easily between platforms.

Transport And Security

TIB/Rendezvous software uses subject-based addressing™ technology to direct messages to their destinations, so program processes can communicate without knowing the details of network addresses or connections. Subject-based addressing conventions define a uniform name space for messages and their destinations.

A network transport delivers messages across a network, to process on one or more hosts. The service, network and daemon parameters of a network transport specify its scope within the network.

Service Parameter: TIB/Rendezvous daemon processes communicate using UDP services. Each transport communicates on a single service; a transport can communicate only with other transports on the same service. You can specify a service either as service name or as a port number.
Network Parameter: consists of network, multi cast groups, and send address separated by semicolons.
Daemon Parameter: The Daemon parameter instructs the transport creation function about how and where the TIB/Rendezvous daemon can be found, and how communication can be established.
The subject name of the message indirectly determines the message’s destination—the set of subscribers that receive the message. Every subscriber to that subject name receives the message; non-subscribers do not receive it. The set of subscribers can change dynamically, depending on which programs are listening for the subject name.

All the strings in the wire format use the character encoding appropriate to the locale of the sender. For example, the United States is locale en_US, and uses the Latin-1 character encoding (also called ISO 8859-1).

Fault Tolerance Concepts

Fault Tolerance in a network environment is characterized by rapid recovery from the sudden difficulties such as process termination, hardware failure, and network disconnects

Platforms Supported

Rendezvous is available on platforms ranging from desktop PCs running Windows to mainframes running OS/390. Rendezvous APIs are available in Java, C, C++, Perl, and COM.

Databases Supported

Oracle7/8 (NT and Unix)
Sybase11/12 (Unix only), and
MS SQL-Server 6.5/7.0.

Web Methods

The following are some features:

Easy to use/code
Server based: Broker clients communicate through broker server
Settings that need to be done in broker host
Event type definition:You have to define all the events with the arguments and types properly.
Client group definition: The attribute of client groups determines which broker clients can connect to the Broker, what events they can publish and subscribe to.
Broker client: It is the Broker client that connects to the Broker, creates events from event types, puts data into the events, publishes/subscribes the events. Broker clients must be linked to appropriate client group in the broker host.
Shorter learning phase

Information Exchange

Events (Standard unit for information exchange): All communication and information exchange is done using events.
Point to Point messaging: All events pass through a Broker.
Events (name, arguments and types) are predefined in the server.
Supports both Publish/Subscribe and Request/reply

Transport And Security

Underlying all elements of the WebMethods Enterprise architecture is a security model that addresses:

Authorization
User, Broker client, and Broker authentication
Event privacy and integrity
Supports both Publish/Subscribe and Request/reply

When a Broker client opens a connection to a Broker, it asks to join a particular client group (to assume the properties of that client group). The Broker verifies the client’s membership in the following manner:

The client can present the Broker with a digital certificate attesting to its identity. Certificates are digitally signed by a Certification Authority (CA). An administrator enters a list of well-known and trusted CAs in the Broker.
To tighten authorization further, users can also have authenticating digital certificates. When user authentication is in effect, both the client and its user must be authorized to join a client group.

In addition to specifying what event types the client can publish or subscribe to, client group properties also specify whether the events sent between the client and the Broker are encrypted for privacy and/or digitally signed for integrity. A subscriber can find out if the event traveled exclusively over secure links.

Platforms Supported

WebMethods Enterprise is available for Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 98, Solaris 2.x, IRIX, AIX, HP-UX, Digital Unix and OS/2. (WebMethods Enterprise server software doesn’t run on Windows 95 or Windows 98) The language compatibility of each adapter is explained under the adapter topic.

Databases Supported

Oracle
MS SQL Server
Informix
Others