Resolution:
An application having an impaired status means that it is not ready to run. This is a feature that was not available in BW 5.x. If a shared resource or dependency is not started or functioning, the application would simply hang and not move on without telling what was wrong. As a user/admin, you will need to examine the logs and make a determination based on knowledge of the application.

In BW 6.x, each application has a list of dependencies that need to be satisfied for it to run.

1). The engine needs to be up and running. Possible misconfiguration. 
2). Shared resources that are defined in the application need to be initialized. Possible misconfiguration.
3). All bundles that belong to an application need to be resolved. A bundle could be missing an import-package.

If any dependencies are not met, the application will be in an impaired state. The following link describes the steps required for enabling the OSGi Console for an AppNode.

https://docs.tibco.com/pub/activematrix_businessworks/6.9.1/doc/html/Default.htm#administration/enabling-the-osgi-co.htm

Once the OSGi Console is enabled you can run the OSGi commands. The "la" stands for the "list applications" command of the OSGi console. The command shows the details of the application and their resolved and unresolved dependencies. This will tell you what dependency is not met and where to look further to investigate the problem. This is implemented as a state machine. Thus, an application can be in the impaired state and then transition to the "running" state. These states are also visible in the Administrator console and the UI. Normally, the impaired state is a transitional state, that is the application either goes into Running or StartFailed state soon after. However, when you have a failing shared resource, the application remains in  an impaired state as long as its dependencies remain unresolved.