After having utilizing TIBCO’s Designer product for a number of months, several blaring deficiencies come to mind.. .here’s a list of my top complaints.  I expect I’ll be adding to this list as I continue to discover new ‘features’ within the product.

  1. Unable to open 2 versions of the same project at the same time.  Unless you rename the tibco project, designer does not let you open two version of the same project.
  2. Internal editor for java sources is like trying to write a java program in notepad.  Why not allow it to link to an external editor?
  3. No Subversion (svn) support.  Has perforce and cvs but no svn?.. get with the times already
  4. Service deployments (.ear) files on a linux environment consume the max amount of memory allotted.. (approx 512mb per .ear).  This makes a SOA architecture hard to achieve if end up having to bundle services into a single .ear due to hardware constraints… imagine 60 services with this overhead.
  5. Generated files do not present themselves in a standard order.  Often if you resave a project the xml will be re-ordered, thus triggering your source control tool to think there is an uncommitted change even if there isn’t one.
  6. When defining a process archive designer prevents you from adding multiple process starters.  Strangely if you add them all at once instead of one by one this is ok.  This could be the scenario when you have a service with multiple processes that listen on different queues.  Why designer isn’t consistent I don’t know..  stop assuming to ‘know’ what I’m trying to do!
  7. (UPDATED 26-Jul-2010) Parse Data activity does not handle reading a csv input with embedded  double quotes.   Typically CSV files identify these values by surrouding entire column contents in “, and any embedded quotes are doubled up..  This is actually what the Parse Data documentation prodivded by TIBCO states.  Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

For example:

1, Bob, Sanders, “Height 5′4″”, Weight: 153lbs”, 100, “NSW, Victoria”

Would not parse correctly as the 5′4″ text would signify the end of the column and “, Weight: 153lbs would end up as the next value.  After talking with TIBCO support, apparently this is a known issue (BW-7947) and will be resolved in BW6. Geez, thanks.

Now I realize no software of this nature is foolproof, but really, some of these things are pretty basic.  I think these guys need to stepup their QA when your selling to major enterpises who utilize the stuff in mission critical areas.

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