Upcoming Events

Cloud Connect
Santa Clara
Feb 13-16, 2012

Cloud Connect brings together the entire cloud eco-system to better understand the transformation we're experiencing and promises to be the defining event of the cloud computing industry. Learn about the latest cloud technologies and platforms from thought leaders in Cloud Connect’s comprehensive conference.

Register Now!

R E V I E W

Smooth Integrators

August 7, 2003
By Don MacVittie

>> continued from previous page

Tibco BusinessWorks 2.0.4

	Issue TOC
	Print full article
	Print this page
	Download as PDF
	E-Mail this URL
	Discuss this article
	Flame the author

	In this article
	Introduction
	Sybase Integration Orchestrator 4.0
	Vitria BusinessWare 4.1.1
	Tibco BusinessWorks 2.0.4
	BEA Systems WebLogic Integration 7.0
	IBM WebSphere MQ Integrator 2.1
	How We Tested \| Web Links
	Report Card

BusinessWorks is Tibco's BPM solution laid atop its ActiveEnterprise core messaging suite. The BusinessWorks designer is intuitive, not cluttered like some of its competitors.

Installation was relatively simple, but like most rivals, JDBC was a pain to get configured correctly: Yet again, we were forced to finagle parameters and parameter order until we were able to connect with each database. Once database connections were complete, we were able to move forward with the BPM designer.

The design tool in BusinessWorks was straightforward, with integration parts divvied up much more cleanly than competitors. Shared resources were in a single folder, where we could easily go back and reuse them during our testing. All the functionality we required in an EAI package, including real-time updates and Web services support, was present.

While it took us as many steps to create a simple database-field-to-database-field update as it would have with a rival, BusinessWorks made the process less painful by using Tibco's Rendezvous transport agent and ActiveDatabase connections. Support for creation of Web services out of EAI modules is an excellent benefit that other vendors will pick up on quickly. A more intuitive version of this feature contributed to Integration Orchestrator winning this review, and BEA has informed us that this functionality will be in its next release of WebLogic Integration.

BusinessWorks did make creation of database connections easier by giving us the JDBC connection, a publisher and a transport for the data. Triggers in its database sent update and insert notifications, then showed us the interface we needed to connect to via the trigger definition, which we then "mapped" to the object (called the publisher) that distributes the message. All in all, a little easier to do the job, and one less object to track. While WebLogic has a similar implementation, during our testing we preferred the simplified configuration of these integrations offered by BusinessWorks.

BusinessWorks' management interface is also cleaner than those of rivals, with the ability to start and stop applications and view critical alerts and system status. Everything systems administrators need, without a lot of excess to confuse the issue--but also not much break on the price.

Tibco BusinessWorks 2.0.4, $350,000 as tested. Tibco Software, (650) 846-1000. www.tibco.com