Tibco Adapters Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. What Are Adapters?

Answer :

Adapters are connectors to data sources to catch event changes. Once an Adapter catches a event change, Adapter publishes the message to a message box using either EMS or RVD.Adapter is a gateway between different applications using messaging channels.

Question 2. What Are The Different Types Of Adapters?

Answer :

• Technical Adapters ( File Adapter, DB Adapter )
• Functional Adapters ( PeopleSoft Adapter, SAP R3 Adapter)
• Custom Adapters

Question 3. Explain About Adapter Components ?

Answer :

Each adapter has two main components, an adapter palette and a run-time adapter. In addition, some adapters include a design-time adapter. The adapter palette and design-time adapter are used during configuration, and the run-time adapter is used at production time.

Question 4. Explain About Adapter Palette ?

Answer :

Each adapter includes a palette that is used for configuration. The palette is automatically loaded into TIBCO Designer during adapter installation and available the next time Designer is started. The palette enables you to configure adapter specific options, such as its connection to the vendor application, logging options, and adapter services. During the design phase, the palette connects to the vendor application and fetches information about connection options and data schemas. You can then graphically select the appropriate items. For example, during configuration of a TIBCO Adapter for ActiveDatabase adapter instance, the palette fetches all pertinent tables in the database. You then choose the tables that the particular service is to send or receive.

Question 5. What Is Run-time Adapter ?

Answer :

Once the adapter has been configured using TIBCO Designer, it can be deployed. A deployed adapter instance is referred to as a run-time adapter. A run-time adapter operates in a production environment, handling communication between a vendor application and other applications that are configured for the TIBCO environment.

Question 6. Design-time Adapter ?

Answer :

Some adapters use a design-time adapter (DTA) to access a vendor application and return design-time configuration information. The palette is a client of the DTA process. The DTA connects to the vendor application, fetches data schemas and sends them to the palette.

Question 7. Explain About Adapter Lifecycle ?

Answer :

The following is an overview of the adapter lifecycle:

Install the vendor application to which the adapter connects before installing the adapter. For many adapters, the adapter and vendor application need not be installed on the same machine.

Adapters depend on other software from TIBCO. Before installing an adapter, the TIBCO Run-Time Agent software must be installed on each computer on which the adapter runs.

Create an adapter instance and save it in a project using TIBCO Designer™. A project contains configuration information required for a run-time adapter to interact with the vendor application and other applications.

Deploy the adapter. An adapter instance is deployed using TIBCO Administrator.      

Using TIBCO Designer, create an Enterprise Archive (EAR) file, which contains information about the adapter instances and processes you wish to deploy.

Using TIBCO Administrator, upload the EAR, then deploy the adapter on the machine(s) of your choice. You can set runtime options before deployment.

Using TIBCO Administrator, start and stop the adapter.

Monitor the adapter using the built-in monitoring tools provided by TIBCO Administrator.

Question 8. Explain About Adapter Services ?

Answer :

Adapters are responsible for making information from different applications available to other applications across an enterprise. To do so, an adapter is configured to provide one or more of the following services: 

• Publication Service 
• Subscription Service 
• Request-Response Service 
• Request-Response Invocation Service

1) Publication Service : 

An adapter publication service recognizes when business events happen in a vendor application, and asynchronously sends out the event data in realtime to interested systems in the TIBCO environment. For example, an adapter can publish an event each time a new customer account is added to an application. Other applications that receive the event can then update their records just as the original application did. When an application receives a request to create a customer record, the application notifies the adapter about the request and the adapter publishes the event. 

User Interface-----------------Application X--------------Adapter -------------- TIBCO Messaging 

Create record Send to adapter Publishing 

Polls on the source data table (base table). 

Reads data from the source table. Sends the data to the message bus.

2 ) Subscription Service: 

An adapter subscription service asynchronously performs an action such as updating business objects or invoking native APIs on a vendor application. The adapter service listens to external business events, which trigger the appropriate action. Referring to the previous example, an adapter subscription service can listen for customer record creation events (happening in an application and published to the TIBCO infrastructure) and update another application. 

TIBCO Messaging------------Adapter-----------Application Y Subscribing Update record 

Reads data from the message bus. 

Gives the data to the destination table.

3) Request-Response Service: 

In addition to asynchronously publishing and subscribing to events, an adapter can be used for synchronously retrieving data from or executing transactions within a vendor application. After the action is performed in the vendor application, the adapter service sends a response back to the requester with either the results of the action or a confirmation that the action occurred. This entire process is called request-response, and it is useful for actions such as adding or deleting business objects. 

Receives requests from other applications. 

Parses the requests. Returns response (Sends only the requested data to the message bus).

4 Request-Response Invocation Service:

An adapter request-response invocation service is similar to the request-response service, except that the roles are reversed. The vendor application is now the requester or initiator of the service, instead of the provider of the service. The adapter service acts as a proxy, giving the vendor application the ability to invoke synchronously functionality on an external system.

Question 9. What Are The 3 Main Configuration Elements Common For All Adapters?

Answer :

• Design Time ( For BW Testing )
• Run Time ( For Admin Deployment )
• Service ( Pub / Sub, Request-Reply )

Question 10. What Is Publish By Value And Publish By Reference?

Answer :

In Publish by Value, all the specified columns in the source table are copied into the Publishing table.

In Publish by reference, only the specified key column values are copied to the publishing table.

Question 11. What Is The Difference Between Jdbc Activities And Adb Adapter?

Answer :

• ADB uses ODBC to connect, JDBC uses JDBC
• ADB is more suitable for instances where you have a lot of processing
• ADB is more suitable for instances where you want that a particular action on a DB Table triggers a BW process.
• ADB adapter is best for publishing from database.
• For simple inserts and updates then ADB subscriber is best.
• In case of insert or update to database then check if you have complex JDBC inserts, transaction management and other dynamic queries then JDBC activities are best.
• JDBC is more suitable for running dynamic code where in runtime you can execute statements with different values depending on process execution.

Question 12. What Are Modes Of Operation For File Adapter In Record Mode?

Answer :

• Synchronous mode upon receiving an event, the publication service will allow other services in the instance only after it completes the processing and publishing of all the files that match the specified criteria.
• In Asynchronous mode the publication service allows other services of the instance to receive events while it is processing and publishing a file. By default Subscription service always operates in Asynchronous mode.

Question 13. What Are Supported Sql Operations In Database Adapters?

Answer :

The database adapter supports the following SQL operations for publishing and subscribing:

• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE
• UPDATE/INSERT (update if row exists, otherwise insert)

Question 14. What Are The Transport Types Supported By Adb Adapters?

Answer :

• Rendezvous
• JMS

Question 15. How Can You Fine-tune An Adb Adapter? What Are The Different Parameters That Can Be Used?

Answer :

• We can use publish by value or publish by reference for high speed and data type support like oracle long respectively.
• Can use polar or alerter for frequent and infrequent data changes respectively.
• Adb.PollingInterval, ADB.DUDPECT.adapter instance_name parameters can be used to do flow control and avoid duplication respectively.

Question 16. What Are The Quality Of Services We Can Have In Adapter Publishing Services?

Answer :

RV: reliable, certified, transactional

Question 17. What Are The Wire Formats We Can Have In Adapter Publishing Services?

Answer :

Wire formats:

1. RV: active enterprise message, RV message, XML message.
2. JMS: XML message

Question 18. Explain The Internal Functioning Of Adb Publication Service?

Answer :

when we configure ADB publishing service it creates Publishing table for source table, Trigger acts as a bridge between source and publishing table. Whenever data is being inserted/updated/deleted from source table, it will be inserted into publishing table by means of trigger. ADB has another component called polling agent. Polling agent will be keep looking for new inserts into publishing table and if it finds any then converts the record in p table into the specified wire format and publishes on specified quality of service.

Question 19. What Is Publish By Value And Publish By Reference. Explain The Pros And Cons?

Answer :

publish by value: In this type the changes in the source table are reflected in the p_table and the data s taken from there. Its used when high speed is required. It does not support data types like oracle long.

publish by reference: In this type the data is directly taken from the source table where only the primary key will come from p_table. It allows data types like oracle long. Loss of changes in the source table can be lost because of the waiting time. (This can be avoided using alerter).

Question 20. What Are The Types Of Message Transfers In File Adapters?

Answer :

Record transfer: To integrate file systems to TIBCO AE environment.

Simple file transfer: To transfer files to other TIBCO adapters.

Question 21. Can We Limit The Number Of Columns To Be Published From The Source Table?

Answer :

Yes, using the use field in adapter publishing table tab. Just uncheck the columns you dont want to use.

Question 22. Can We Publish Parent And Child Table Information By Using Single Adapter Configuration And How?

Answer :

Yes, in the adapter publisher table tab create a parent table first by look up and then add the child table using the add child tab then click on the child table column to specify the foreign key than to establish a relationship between the primary key of the parent and the foreign key of the child go to the column in the child table and specify the primary key of the parent table.

In the subscription service the destination table is created and the child table mapping tab will have the child table on the left mapped with the parent table on the right.