Complex Event Processing, or CEP, is a technology for building and managing event-driven information systems. CEP is primary a set of programming language constructs that deal with the task of processing multiple streams of event data with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within those streams. CEP employs techniques such as detection of complex patterns of many events, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events such as causality, membership, and timing, and event-driven processes.
CEP provides the core event language processing capabilities for Event Stream Processing (ESP), or ESP, which includes technologies such as event databases, and event visualization software.
A Conceptual Description of CEP
Examples of events include church bells ringing, the appearance of a man in a tuxedo or morning suit, a girl in a flowing white gown and rice flying through the air. A complex event is what one infers from the simple events: a wedding is happening. CEP is a programming language that helps discover complex, inferred events by analysing and correlating other events: the bells, the man and girl in wedding gear and the rice flying through the air.
Products
The first commercial implementations of CEP were created by Apama and iSpheres in 1998. Streaming event databases have also emerged in the same time frame, including ObjectStore, Vhayu and KDB. Newer products, released in 2005, include StreamBase and Coral8.
See also
- Event Stream Processing (ESP) ESP is the general class of technologies that includes CEP that process streams of data
- Real-time computing CEP systems are typically real-time systems
- RFID Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, requires CEP
External links
- The Power of Events by David Luckham, from Stanford University, a book on CEP.
- David Luckham's CEP web site
- Event Stream Processing Resource Site
- CEP: a start here guide and blog by David Soul
- Separating the Wheat from the Chaff Article about CEP as applied to RFID, appeared in RFID Journal
- Complex Event Processing Technical Communityon egroups