TIBFAQS

Learn the main reasons behind an Impaired status and how you can perform troubleshooting to identify and solve the error.

This is another post of the #TIBFAQS series. To remind you what all this about is, you can submit your questions regarding TIBCO developing issues or doubts and try to provide an answer here to try to help the community of TIBCO developers out there.

This article is part of my comprehensive TIBCO Integration Platform Guide where you can find more patterns and best practices for TIBCO integration platforms.

So, today I am going to start with one of the most common issues when we work with BusinessWorks, and it is when I am going to deploy my application or test it locally, and I get this log trace and nothing after that: TIBCO BW Impaired Status.

This is one of the usual situations for a BusinessWorks junior developer and one of the reasons you have more time spent doing troubleshooting. Let’s get some tricks today, so this message will never again stop you in your journey to production.

What is the cause of this error?

This error means that the BusinessWorks runtime is not able to meet all the dependencies among the components to be able to start. As you probably know, BusinessWorks each of the applications’ components is managed independently, and they are referencing each other.

For example, the Application depends on the Application Module and the Shared Module. The Application module can have a dependency on a JMS Connection and so on.

Situations that can raise this error

Let’s take a look now at the situation that can raise this error and solve it.

1.- Missing module or incompatible versions

One usual situation that can lead to this problem is missing modules or incompatible versions of the modules. In that case, the referencable component will wait for a module or a specific version of a module to be started. Still, this module is missing, or it is starting another version.

2.- Not valid shared connections

Another option can be if some of the components are required to establish the connection with other technologies such as JDBC connections, JMS connections, KAFKA connections, or another one of the more than 200 connectors available.

3.- Missing Starter component in the Module Descriptors

The last of the usual suspects here is when you have a Stater component in the Module Descriptors, but this process is not available inside the EAR file that you are deploying. That dependency is never satisfied, and that leads to unlimited Impaired status.

How to detect what component is missing?

To help you in the process of detecting in which situation you are, you have an incredible tool at your disposal which is the command la from the OSGi Console Interface.

This command helps us list the applications deployed in this specific AppNode or container and give us the details of them, including the reason for an Impaired situation.

How to run the OSGi console depends on your deployment model, but you can read all the information about it in the link below:

Summary

I hope you find this interesting to solve your TIBCO BW Impaired status on your apps, and if you are one of those facing this issue now, you have information not to be stopped by this one. If you would like to submit your questions feel free to use one of the following options:

• Twitter: You can send me a mention at @alexandrev on Twitter or a DM or even just use the hashtag #TIBFAQs that I will monitor.
• Email: You can send me an email to alexandre.vazquez at gmail.com with your question.
• Instagram: You can send me a DM on Instagram at @alexandrev

This is another post of the #TIBFAQS series and only to remind you what all this about is that you can submit your questions regarding TIBCO developing issues or doubts and I try to provide an answer here to try to help the community of TIBCO developers out there.

This article is part of my comprehensive TIBCO Integration Platform Guide where you can find more patterns and best practices for TIBCO integration platforms.

So, today I am going to start with one of the I think most common issues when we work with BusinessWorks Container Edition and we are deploying into our target environment and it is a trace similar to this one:

What is the cause of this error?

This error means that the BusinessWorks runtime is not able to read and process the properties file to start the application. So that means that your error is regarding the configuration of the application and not the application itself. So, the good news here: your code seems to be fine at this point.

As probably you know all the TIBCO BW applications use for a very long time an XML file to have the configuration values to start with. This is the file that in the case of BusinessWokrks Container Edition is stored at /tmp/tmp/pcf.substvar and it is populated for several sources depending on how to manage your configuration.

As you know you have several options to manage your configuration in Cloud base environments: Environment variables, Config Maps, Configuration Management Systems such as Spring Cloud Config or Consul.. So it is important that you have a clear understanding of what are you using.

So the error is that the file has something in its content that is not valid, because it is wrong or because it is not able to understand it.

Situations that can raise this error

Let’s take a look now at the situation that can raise this error and how we can solve it.

1.- Incompatible BW-runtime vs EAR versions

Usually, EAR files are compatible with different BusinessWorks runtimes, but this is true when the runtime is more current than the EAR. So I mean, if I generate my application with BWCE 2.5.0 I can run it with runtime 2.5.0, or 2.5.3 or 2.6.0 without any issue, but if I try to run it with an older version like 2.4.2 I can get this error because the EAR file has some “new things” that the runtime is not able to understand.

So it is important to validate that the runtime version that you are using is the expected one and updated it if that is not the case.

2.- XML special characters that need to be escaped

This situation is only true in versions before 2.5.0, but in case you are running an older version, you can also get this error because your property value has an XML character that needs to be escaped. Characters like ‘<’ or ‘&’ and the most used ones to generate this error. If you are using a more updated version you don’t need to escape it because they are automatically escaped.

So depending on the version that you are using update your property’s value accordingly.

Summary

I hope you find this interesting and if you are one of those facing this issue now you have information to not be stopped by this one. If you would like to submit your questions feel free to use one of the following options:

• Twitter: You can send me a mention at @alexandrev on Twitter or a DM or even just using the hashtag #TIBFAQs that I will monitor.
• Email: You can send me an email to alexandre.vazquez at gmail.com with your question.
• Instagram: You can send me a DM on Instagram at @alexandrev

Improve your knowledge about TIBCO technology and also solve the issues that you are facing in your daily development tasks

TIBFAQS is here! This new year I would like to start several initiatives, and I hope you can walk with me during this journey. As you may know, I am a TIBCO Architect, so in my daily activities, I got a lot of questions and inquiries about how to do different things with TIBCO technology from TIBCO BusinessWorks to TIBCO EMS or TIBCO Spotfire.

This article is part of my comprehensive TIBCO Integration Platform Guide where you can find more patterns and best practices for TIBCO integration platforms.

I have noticed that some of these questions are similar from one customer to another, so I would like to use this platform to share all this knowledge to benefit in our daily activities and use the technology most efficiently.

1.- How is this going to work?

I will use some of the common topics that I am aware of in terms of TIBCO development questions and create a periodic article covering it with detail and with a sample application showing the problem and the solution. All the code will be available in my GitHub repository to use for your own reference.

https://github.com/alexandrev

2.- Can I send you my questions?

Yes, sure!! That should be amazing! As I said, I would like to create an engaging community around these posts so we all can benefit from there. So I would like to see your questions and to send them to me you can do it in the following ways:

• Twitter: You can send me a mention at @alexandrev on Twitter or a DM or even just using the hashtag #TIBFAQs that I will monitor.
• Email: You can send me an email to alexandre.vazquez at gmail.com with your question.
• Instagram: You can send me a DM on Instagram at @alexandrev

3.- Where is this going to start?

This will start in late January. The idea is to have at least an article in a bi-weekly periodicity, but that will depend a lot on this initiative’s engagement. The more you share and talk about this initiative to your peers, and the more questions you send to me, the more articles I will create.

4.- What is next?

Since today you can start sending your questions and sharing your feedback about this initiative, and you can follow this blog to wait for the articles to come! Let’s do it together!