Monthly Archives: February 2010

Preparing TIBCO iProcess to connect with Business Works in Windows 7

TIBCO iProcess and Business Works are very easy to work with ONCE you have everything set up. The big catch is ONCE. Especially when you are trying to set it up in an environment which is not supported (i.e. Windows 7 and MS SQL Express 2008).

ENVIRONMENT SETUP

OS: Windows 7

Database: MS SQL Express 2008.

Tibco: Active Matrix Business Works 5.7, iProcess Engine 11.1.0, Business Works iProcess Plugin 11.0.1

Connecting iProcess with Business Works requires the TIBCO Technology Plug-in (specifically the Business Works iProcess Plugin).

Once you install the plug-in you will see iProcess components on your Business Studio palette.

CREATING A CONNECTION

To work with iProcess you need to create an iProcess connection. It has a very helpful option to ‘test’ the iProcess connectivity. I would recommend creating a connection and using the connectivity test feature before you start any EAI project involving iProcess and BW.

If you get ‘icudt36’ or any other ‘UnsatisfiedLinkError’ you might be missing the location of the iProcess plug-in related files from your Windows PATH environment variable. All the required libraries for iProcess can be found in the business works plug-in directory within the bin sub-directory (e.g. tibco\bw\plugins\bin). 

The second issue you might face, if you have selected ‘auto config’ in the Database Connection tab,  is regarding ‘database connection information’ not being sent to the client. If you have tried setting DB connection information to ‘enabled’ in the User tab in the iProcess Object Server configuration utility ‘SWEntObjSvCfg’ and still no luck then you need to get into the Windows Registry and edit the settings there. The settings can be found in ‘Staff EntObj Server’ key. Locate your node and then set ‘DBConnectionAccess’ string data to ‘1’ if it is set to ‘0’.

STARTING AN iPROCESS CASE and CASE MANAGEMENT

Once you are able to connect to an iProcess engine the next thing is to start/stop cases and in general do some ‘case management’.

You might face problems related to ‘Distributed Management Objects’ (e.g. error BW-iProcess-001001) then you need to get ‘Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components’ which contains the DMO component and ensure that the ‘swpr’o (or whichever database user you set up for iProcess) has sysadmin role in the database.

You may need to change the SQL configuration to enable OLE Automation using ‘sp_configure’ and change execution permissions for certain stored procedures if you get errors related to ‘not being able to execute stored procedure…’.

Ab baat pakki…. the deal is fixed…. X 4

The second season of Swayamvar starring Rahul Mahajan is currently the number one TV show of  India. The show is supposed to end on the 6th of March and this time they have promised us a marriage!

I like this program because it blows away some serious concepts in marriages. At the same time it exposes the dark side of human nature.

In last nights episode he travelled to meet the family of the first girl (Harpreet Chhabra). Harpreet’s family members were obviously treating it is if a boy had come to meet the family for her marriage. They asked him whether he has any ‘demands’ [for dowry]. Did they realise he was on camera being view by half of India? Even if he wanted something would he have said so on air? Women activists would be buring his effigy all across India if he had. But this shows that dowry is still a big issue.

Now the second point: usually when marriage is being discussed between two families it is usually between TWO families! The process is quite sequential.

 In this case he has to visit three other families who are expected to discuss marriage equally seriously! He has to interact with girls at individual level as if SHE is the one, which is impossible at the deepest level. The problem is that this can be taken in two ways:

1) Either he is really good at compartmentalising emotions and such deep interactions… which means there is full scope for other women in his life, perhaps even after marriage.

2) He has already made up his mind and all this is acting.

But this show has made bride hunting similar to buying a house where you have multiple deals going on at once. A new concept indeed in marriages. Will this be used by families to parallelise bride hunting? Make it more efficient? Especially keeping in mind, like good houses, brides are in short supply?