TIBCO is a great integration platform. A tool that is well-known, proven and has many advantages. But this technology also has flaws. Here are some shortcomings that I have noticed over the years of working with TIBCO Business Works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What made me confused at the beginning of exploring TIBCO EAI is the multitude of products (at the moment of writing this article I counted over 700), with functionalities which often overlap. What makes things even harder is that TIBCO develops BusinessWorks \u2122 5 and 6 simultaneously. So, in addition to the question \u201cDo you know TIBCO BusinessWorks \u2122?\u201d you need to specify what version you mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides the standard assessment of whether the given TIBCO product will meet its requirements, it is important to learn what development plans the producer has for it and how many customers are using the product. The experience with TIBCO ActiveMatrix\u00ae Service Grid has shown that a highly advertised, recommended and promoted product turned out to be a dead end after a few years. The costs of migrating solutions and changing the Integration Platform in a company are significant and often there is no business case<\/em>, so it is definitely worth avoiding such surprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes I get the feeling that in modern applications quality comes second. Producers need to release something, to boast of trendy functionalities and to show innovations. The customers won\u2019t learn about bugs on marketing presentations, they will do it only after purchase, in their own environment… Unfortunately TIBCO products are not an exception here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, sometimes releases seemingly ready versions happen \u2013 I would call them “late beta”. So before upgrading to a new version, it’s worth doing precise tests to make sure it doesn\u2019t contain any “surprises”. So if you still aren\u2019t familiar with the regression tests, it\u2019s high time to change it. Also I will add that hotfix\u2019s release doesn\u2019t guarantee success as it may crash something that worked earlier. Sometimes several fixes are necessary to make it work as it should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n TIBCO BusinessWorks \u2122 5 offers a wide range of possibilities. However sometimes it can make everything worse, because it allows you to create your own solutions to which there are dedicated systems such as BPM, Order Management and provisioning. Such applications are often perfectly tailored to match individual needs at the moment of implementation, but are often problematic and expensive to maintain and develop later, and may be not as flexible as dedicated solutions.<\/p>\n\n\nSometimes everything happens too fast<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
You can do a lot or too much?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n