Event-driven models and Complex Event Processing

BANGALORE, INDIA: Complex Event Processing (CEP) is an emerging computing model that allows organizations to quickly respond to continuously changing circumstances. With CEP, organizations now have access to technology that enables them to monitor, analyze and respond to fast-changing conditions that materially impact their operational effectiveness.

And, if needed by the business, CEP-based systems can provide organizations with a mechanism to respond - in milliseconds if need be - to exploit perhaps momentary opportunities or to pre-empt looming threats.

CEP technology enables organizations to create a new class of applications that are “event-driven”. But what is an event-driven application? Event-driven applications differ from traditional applications in that, rather than execute a prescribed sequence of instructions on transactional data, they listen for and respond to relevant events.

Traditional application architectures operate on data within a database, what can be described as “data at rest”. In contrast, event-driven applications act on events, data “in motion.”

Those events offer you the power to know what has happened, where it is happened, and when. And with the right tools, you can define actions that allow your organization to respond to that information.

Events are the fuel that drives this new model of computing. But what are “events”? Events are data elements that capture the state (or changes in state) of computer or real-world objects.

Essentially, events are signals that something has happened – or in some situations a representation that something has not happened when it should have. Events are everywhere. The applications that comprise modern IT architectures generate events. The networks that connect those applications generate events. The Internet/Intranet infrastructures that power many modern businesses generate events.

In truth, events are so pervasive that we often pay no attention to their presence in our business systems because we have long lacked the tools to understand their meaning.

The challenge to understanding events – and becoming event-driven – is that events do not organize themselves into the predictable data models that traditional applications expect. We don’t control events – they just happen. They tend to be raw, low level pieces of information and – and they are often voluminous. And they come in waves, unlikely to follow traditional data patterns.

Nor are they easily assembled into the “records” that traditional applications and their supporting databases expect. Events are not very malleable into the formats understood by traditional applications. Lastly, events are inherently transient, bound to a particular point in time. So to gain their benefit, you must respond to them quickly.

Can you harvest this information to better understand what is happening within your organization? Is there a way to understand the events happening outside your organization and respond to them in ways that would help your organization survive and thrive? With an event-driven approach – and complex event processing – you can. With CEP, there are now ways to listen for those events, to understand when they are signaling something of significance, and to respond accordingly. There are ways to transform the “noise” of events into the “signals” that can drive your business more effectively.

What is Real-Time?

The real value to events is their ability to signal what has happened and when – and depending on the application requirements – also where. CEP is valuable because it offers the ability to respond quickly.

In traditional applications, users interact with structured data or execute periodic batch processes for analysis. But those applications have fairly rigorous data requirements for the collection and analysis of data. If the data is not structured and assembled in a certain way it is not useable. Such rigor often means that any real insights are not available until long after the conditions that generate the data have already happened.

And that delay may be too late for a business that is operating in a real-time environment and needs to act quickly.

Increasingly, the environment in which business operates is demanding the capability to respond quickly to conditions that impact the business.

When conditions change, the events that reflect that change must be analyzed as soon as they happen. Otherwise, the opportunity to take action is gone. CEP is the engine for taking that action. An event-based system, powered by CEP, can monitor the events and respond to a triggering event (or pattern of numerous events) as soon as it happens. In this way the response is as immediate (or real- time) as possible.

There are a number of broader market forces that are in play that make event-driven approaches – and CEP – a reality. Three important ones are:

1)the continuing adoption of service oriented architectures (SOA)

2) the ability of technology systems to interact with and capture activity taking place in the physical (non-digital) world, and

3)the increased levels of interconnectivity that are driving more business models.

Looking Ahead

Organizations with imagination are beginning to see the benefits of event-driven approaches and CEP can be a key contributor to their delivery of more responsive operations.

The need for event-driven models will be found in many locations. In financial services, looming competition means there is a need to offer timely and accurate monitoring of range of processes and where timeliness is not measured in days or weeks, but rather in hours if not seconds.

In telecommunications, it may come from the opportunity to capitalize on emerging demands for real-time service provisioning or pricing. In retail, it may be a consequence of lean supply chains or the challenge of supporting vendor-managed inventories with real-time replenishment.

Other examples abound where there are industry-specific requirements to be more responsive to changing – even volatile – circumstances.

More fundamentally, being event-driven is not merely a way to respond to what the market thrusts upon you. It is becoming a way for any business to build, sustain and grow market position. It provides an opportunity for insightful leaders to pursue innovative business models that don’t just respond to competitive threats, but rather set new standards that themselves become the competitive threats to which others must respond.

(Chris Martins is the director of marketing, Progress Software, Apama Division)