TIBreview: Quality code review for TIBCO BusinessWorks 6

What is TIBReview?

TIBReview is an automated tool for analyzing the quality of a TIBCO BusinessWorks 6 project. It provides:

• An extensible and configurable engine for implementing automated rules in XPath or Java.
• A output mechanism for generating a quality report either in a CSV or a PMD format (directly then integrable in Jenkins or Sonar).
• A mechanism for managing the rules processing based on a configuration file (this way on an environment you can choose to modify property values or to disable only certain rules).

What is TIBReview able to analyze?

So far the process and resource assets.

In terms of process quality check:

• Check forbidden activities: Checkpoint, Copy File etc…
• Global conventions: process description missing, default namespace used, process size, number of activities per process, missing Catch All activity etc…
• Transitions: missing label on a conditioned transition, missing Empty activity after a transition parallelization, conditioned transitions without a no matching one
• Critical sections: make sure a blocking activity is not called within a critical section scope
• Process calls infinite cycles: for example Process A --> Process B --> Process A
• Etc...

In terms of resource quality check, TIBReview is able to detect hardcoded values (HTTP Client maxTotalConnections, FTP Connection username, JDBC Connection dbURL hardcoded etc…).

In total, TIBReview provides about 50 automated checks for the first version (and we keep working on it to improve the quality coverage).

How can I implement my own rules?

Yes you can and you should ;) Because each context is unique, it was important to have an extensible engine to be able to easily and quickly implement new quality rules. The rules logic is defined in the tibrules.xml file.

For a process, you can implement two types of rules: XPath or Java.

An XPath rule can be pretty straightforward to implement and most of TIBReview rules are based on this mechanism. At runtime, the XPath request will be analyzed to replace each %property% by the value defined in the configuration file (see hereunder for more details) and each xpathFunction by the value defined in the tibrules.xml. An xpathFunction is a simple way to keep readable your tibrules file without having to duplicate an XPath statement.

Yet, it is also possible for complex rules implementation to do it directly in Java (for example cycle analysis). You must create a new class in com.tibco.exchange.tibreview.processor.processrule.java extending the PRJava abstract class. For a concrete example, take a look at com.tibco.exchange.tibreview.processor.processrule.java.PRCycleCheck.

It is also possible to add complex conditions management and to use if / elseif / else statements. For example: "If this is a top process, I want to check this XPath rule but if this is a sub process, I want to check that Java rule".

For resources, you can easily extend the tibrules.xml by adding new resource type or new property. Each property will be then checked to make sure it has been managed using a property.

How to configure TIBReview?

You can use the config.properties file:

• rules.disable: a list of disabled rule name separated by a ; character.
• property.< myProperty >: allows to set a value for the property. This property will be used in the tibrules.xml file if an implementation uses %myProperty%. For a concrete example, you should take a look at the Process size: width rule.

How to run TIBReview?

The JAR syntax is the following:

$java -Dlog4j.configuration=file:"" -jar tibreview-0.0.1.jar -r -c -i {project|process|resource} -s -o {csv|pmd} -t

• -r: tibrules.xml file
• -c: config.properties file
• -i: input type, use project to analyze a whole project, process to analyze a single process, resource to analyze a single resource
• -s: input path, if –i was set to project you must reference a BW6 project
• -o: output type (CSV or PMD file)
• -t: target path

For example:

$java -Dlog4j.configuration=file:"log4.properties" -jar tibreview-0.0.1.jar -r tibrules.xml -c config.properties -i project -s C:/tibco/workspace/myProject -o pmd -t C:/output

How to build TIBReview?

Using Maven, you just have to run a $mvn package. A fat JAR will be packaged in the /target folder.

Can I participate to the project?

It would be with pleasure :) Please feel free to contact me if you would like to work on the project or for any questions / remarks.