Web pages are deceptively simple to create.
But transacting electronic business means the pages have to be linked with an array of back-end corporate systems, such as billing, inventory, production scheduling and delivery. Tibco's ActiveEnterprise 2.0 is a toolbox for creating these links. Information about a new order, for example, is stripped from a Web form, packaged into a special message format and routed to a series of enterprise applications, which check inventory and credit, create the purchase order and schedule delivery. The result is that Web users placing orders can get the order confirmed quickly, while they're still watching their screens, rather than learning later that they forgot to enter some information. In Version 2.0, Tibco has added a half-dozen new or improved parts.