What is Tibco?

TIBCO Software Inc. (Nasdaq:TIBX ) is a leading provider of total business integration solutions delivering infrastructure software that enables businesses to seamlessly integrate business systems in real-time. TIBCO's products enable the real-time distribution of information through patented technology called The Information Bus™, or TIB®. TIBCO technology was first used to digitize Wall Street and has since been adopted in diverse industries including financial services, telecommunications, electronic commerce, transportation, logistics, manufacturing and energy. TIBCO's global customer base includes more than 1,200 customers such as Cisco Systems, Yahoo!, Ariba, NEC, Enron, Sun Microsystems, GE Capital, The Limited, Delta Air Lines, Philips, AT&T and Pirelli. TIBCO is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Architecture

Tibco’s main architecture is based on an information-bus oriented system concept.  Whereas all the information that is used by the multiple systems passes through one information-bus.  Tibco commonly refers to this information-bus as the “TIB”.  Databases and applications interface the TIB through API’s supplied from Tibco.

 

Types of Interaction

TIB middleware software supports three distinct kinds of interaction among applications in distributed environments:

·        Request/reply interactions, such as queries or transactions

·        Broadcast request/reply interactions, such as queries that may result in several replies from one or more servers

·        Publish/subscribe interactions, such as general distribution of information from many sources to many consumers

Architectural Benefits

Benefits of a TIB-based architecture include:

·        Easy to create new subsystems – TIB allows developers to create new subsystems, modify existing subsystems, and add new services without having to change the UI or a subsystem’s code.

·        Easy to move subsystems – A subsystem supplying data can be moved to other geographic locations without changing the subsystems that consume the information it supplies. This is important for fault tolerant operation where new subsystems can take over immediately upon the failure of another subsystems.

·        Easier to develop applications – Saves development costs and time because the developers can use a tested API for communications rather than have to design, develop, implement, test, and maintain their own infrastructure code.

·        Faster to develop – Developers can concentrate on applications and business requirements and not have to write and test an infrastructure.  Applications will also be faster to develop because they will be linked into existing and well-tested libraries. Developers will not have to create code necessary for inter-subsystem connectivity

·        Easier to maintain – Personnel can concentrate on the application code. The middleware layers are enhanced and maintained by professionals who are specialists in that type of software

·        Easier to change – Changes will be easier to make to subsystems because they will be independent of their data sources and their data consumers

·        Highly scaleable – The system will be far more scaleable because subsystems and hardware can be added easily and quickly to meet new user demands.

·        Location transparency – The system cal exploit TIB’s subject based addressing to allow system components to be located dynamically, rather than being hard-coded.  This supports a range of system migration needs.

·        Easier to monitor – The system can use TIB/Hawk for monitoring.

·         Error management – The system will be able to log and respond to system and business level errors by generating TIB-based notifications or advisories.