Event-driven architecture poised for wide adoption

<p>Jul 13, 2008 9:16 PM</p>

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CEP = Complex Event Management</p>

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SOA= Service-Oriented Architecture</p>

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One of the main advantages of the SOA approach is that by building standards-based interfaces between components, developers can <b>incrementally construct applications and swap out, reuse and modify components</b> without having to concern themselves with their inner workings. Those who build Web services typically <b>describe the interfaces using the Web Services Definition Language and send XML-based messages between components using SOAP over HTTP.</b>

But Schulte said connecting services occurs in a linear, predictable sequence, whereas <b>an event-driven architecture allows for multiple, less predictable, asynchronous events to happen in parallel and trigger a single action</b>.

Simple event-driven processing has been in common use for at least 10 years with technology such as IBM's or Tibco Software Inc.'s message-oriented middleware and, in the past few years, message-driven Enterprise JavaBeans, he noted.</p>

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David Luckham, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and author of a book on CEP, The Power of Events, said the goal of CEP is rather simple: delivering understandable information about what's happening in IT systems. That information, in turn, can be used for a variety of purposes, such as detecting unusual activity, improving security and recognizing advantageous scenarios in CRM and supply-chain systems.

"The events in IT systems contain untapped information. CEP lets you extract it and use it in ways you want to," he said.

Luckham predicted that CEP will start creeping into Web services, middleware and application servers in 2005. By 2008, he foresees the emergence of CEP standards, languages and complex event-pattern search engines. Ubiquity of CEP will come in 2012, he forecasted.

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