In our experience, the product performs really well when interfacing systems with ERP's through SQL server database tables, but we've even made some interfaces with the web service functionality included with the magic xpi integration platform. Also, we've made some SAP Business One - SAP Business One interfaces, for copying information from one company to another and even between two different ERP systems.
TIBCO ActiveSpaces is only suited in the company where Tibco suites have been already used, the license cost is not a concern, it is only required for data caching purposes and only works in the client/server mode for middle-sizes of data. If the expectation is data cache + distributed computation or embedded IMDG is also one requirement or the data cluster needs span multiple data centers, other light-weight OpenSource IMDG solutions should be considered
Tibco ActiveSpaces is an excellent caching tool. With good design, we can haven a efficient cache layer, that can respond to business needs in sub-seconds (milliseconds) rather than seconds / minutes to respond. This is specially useful for improving the efficiency of the services used in customer interactions.. like login, serving billing information, serving the customer's service usage and any other information customer is interested in accessing frequently.
System process can also use the ActiveSpaces . By caching the information frequently used by the system processes, the data cab be accessed more frequently. And without much disruptions.
If you are already using TIBCO tools, then ActiveSpaces is the right choice to use, as the product is well integrated with all the TIBCO Suite of products. ActiveSpaces integrates well with most common products like TIBCO BusinessWorks, TIBCO BusinessEvents etc.
ActiveSpaces can be easily deployed to a target (TIBCO) environment, with very little additional effort. Although there is an effort required to deploy them.
ActiveSpaces is supported by TIBCO BusinessWorks 5.13 and TIBCO BusinessWorks 6.x. Hence you are not forced to use any version of TIBCO BW, just because you have to use TIBCO ActiveSpaces.
Although the scenarios may be online, the main service usually freezes and the processes can't transact any data. With a single restart of the service, the processes will be functioning again.
The support for more applications would be nice, even though there is a nice number of them. Most of the main applications in the market are supported.
The licensing for the software may be a little confusing; you can't buy individual licenses as they come in packages of four.
TIBCO ActiveSpaces Tuple-based data structure is not flexible enough to support customized native data objects.
There is no secondary index option.
Doesn't provide "predicate based In-Grid distributed search and result aggregation."
only can be used as data cache, the node's only contribute memory but can not use the data partition owner node's computation power to apply the distributed computation customized by the user.
Cross data center replication (geographically) is a pain.
Encounter the performance issue when the data volume is huge, even according to the architecture design, linear scaling up should not have that issue.
Honestly, we have only used and evaluated magic xpi/xpa platforms because of the recommendation of our SAP Business One main supplier, who has previously used the platform for their developments. So far, we have no regrets with the acquisition of the platform and we are very happy with its performance.
One biggest advantage of the Tibco ActiveSpaces is it's ease of integration with the TIBCO suite of products. Hence it is more suitable to TIBCO AS in conjunction with the TIBCO suite of products. All products could offer the same or different level of advantages. For the enterprises that are already using the AWS, then they will prefer to go for Amazon ElastiCache. Oracle In-Memory Cache might have the same level of advantage but the if you are already using the TIBCO suite of products like the BusinessWorks, then TIBCO ActiveSpaces seems to be the right option since there is an out of box plugin available for TIBCO AS and it is compatible with TIBCO products. Otherwise, lots of custom coding is required to use the Oracle or Amazon products as these plugins are not readily available and supported by TIBCO BW.
The implementation time for this kind of projects has been greatly reduced.
Certifying an In-House resource in the Magix xpi and xpa platforms is probably the best option, considering all of the projects that can be developed in the future without the need of an external consultant.
The processes that have been automatized with the Magic xpi platform helped reduce human error and the time those processes took to finish.
