Event Processing for Business

Find out how Events Processing (EP) works and how it can work for you

Business Event Processing: An Introduction and Strategy Guide thoroughly describes what EP is, how to use it, and how it relates to other popular information technology architectures such as Service Oriented Architecture.

• Explains how sense and response architectures are being applied with tremendous results to businesses throughout the world and shows businesses how they can get started implementing EP
• Shows how to choose business event processing technology to suit your specific business needs and how to keep costs of adopting it down
• Provides practical guidance on how EP is best integrated into an overall IT strategy and how its architectural styles differ from more conventional approaches

This book reveals how to make the most advantageous use of event processing technology to develop real time actionable management information from the events flowing through your company's networks or resulting from your business activities. It explains to managers and executives what it means for a business enterprise to be event-driven, what business event processing technology is, and how to use it.

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

CHAPTER 1 Event Processing and the Survival of the Modern Enterprise 1

Four Basic Questions about Events 2

What Are Events and Which Ones Are Important? 3

Why Invest in Event Processing? 5

Know How Well You’re Doing 9

Use All Event Sources 10

Detect When What You Need to Know Happens 11

Event Processing in Use 16

The Human Element and Other Sources of Errors 21

Extract What You Want to Know 22

Getting Started 25

CHAPTER 2 Sixty Years of Event Processing 27

Event Driven Simulation 29

Networks 33

Active Databases 35

Middleware 36

The Enterprise Service Bus 38

Chaos in the Marketing of Information Systems 39

Service Oriented Architecture 40

Event Driven Architecture 44

Summary: Event Processing, 1950–2010 46

CHAPTER 3 First Concepts in Event Processing 49

New Technology Begets New Problems 50

What Is an Event? 51

Event Clouds 54

Levels of Events and Event Analysis 57

Remark on Standards for Business Events 60

Event Streams 61

Processing the Event Cloud 64

Complex Event Processing and Systems That Use It 69

Discussion: Immutability of Events 75

Summary 76

CHAPTER 4 The Rise of Commercial Event Processing 77

The Dawn of Complex Event Processing (CEP) 78

Four Stages of CEP 79

Simple CEP (1999–2007) 81

CEP versus Custom Coding 83

Creeping CEP (2004–2012) 84

Business Activity Monitoring 85

Awareness and Education in Event Processing 87

Languages for Event Processing 87

Dashboards and Human- Computer Interfaces 89

Human- Computer Interfaces 91

CEP Becomes a Recognized Information Technology (2009–2020) 93

Event Processing Standards 97

Ubiquitous CEP 98

CHAPTER 5 Markets and Emerging Markets for CEP 101

Market Areas 104

Financial Systems, Operations, and Services 104

Fraud Detection 110

Transportation 113

Security and Command and Control 121

Command and Control for Security 123

Health Care 126

Energy 128

Summary 133

CHAPTER 6 Patterns of Events 135

Events and Event Objects 136

Overloading Two Meanings 136

Patterns and Pattern Matching 137

Single Event Patterns 137

Processing Patterns by Machine 139

Patterns of Multiple Events Using Operators 140

Event Patterns and State 143

Event Patterns and Time 145

Causality between Events 150

Repetitive and Unbounded Behavior 154

Requirements for an Event Pattern Language 158

Correctness and Other Questions 159

CHAPTER 7 Making Sense of Chaos in Real Time: Part 1 161

Event Type Spaces 163

Restricting the Types of Event Inputs May Not Be an Option 164

The Expanding Input Principle: Always Plan for New Types of Event Inputs and Event Outputs 166

Architecting Event Processing Strategies 167

Gross Filters 168

Prioritization: Split Streaming, Topics, Sentiments, and Other Attributes 169

Complex Filtering and Prioritization Using Event Patterns 171

Summary 173

CHAPTER 8 Making Sense of Chaos in Real Time: Part 2 175

Abstract Events and Views 176

Levels of Abstraction and Views 180

Organizing Views 183

Computing Abstractions by Event Pattern Maps 184

Computable Event Hierarchies 187

Flexibility of Hierarchy Defi nitions 188

Drill Down and Event Analysis 189

Summary: Dealing with Information Overload 192

CHAPTER 9 The Future of Event Processing 195

Taking Stock 196

The Evolution of Holistic Event Processing Systems 198

Crossing Boundaries 202

The Beginnings of Holistic Event Processing Systems 203

Future Air Travel Management Systems 206

Monitoring Human Activities 212

Pandemic Watch Systems 213

Monitoring the Consequences 220

Solving Gridlock in the Metropolis 226

Monitoring Your Personal Information Footprint 230

Summary: The Future of Complex Event Processing 234

APPENDIX Glossary of Terminology: The Event Processing Technical Society: (EPTS) Glossary of Terms—Version 2.0 237

Alphabetical List of Glossary Terms 241

Glossary of Terms 243

Glossary According to Lexicographic Order (definitions only) 255

About the Author 259

Index 261

David Luckham is a Research Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University. Luckham’s research and consulting activities in software technology include multi-processing and business processing languages, event-driven systems, complex event processing, program verification, systems architecture modeling and simulation, and automated deduction and reasoning systems. He is a lecturer and keynote speaker at select international conferences and congresses and the author of The Power of Events. In today’s fast-paced corporate environment, real-time events require immediate action. Event processing (EP)—the ability to collect, analyze, and react to real-time events—is a key component of twenty-first-century business information systems. Presenting a comprehensive overview of the history, status, and future of this continuously evolving field, Event Processing for Business explores the many different ways you can apply event processing in your business operations to enable decision-making right now, as events are happening, and maintain the competitiveness of your organization in an increasingly real-time world.

In Event Processing for Business, author David Luckham shares his decades of IT research and consulting to show you how to use the events in your business and in the world around you to create new, groundbreaking ways of doing business. You’ll discover how to: detect and analyze patterns of events to create a higher level of business operations; maximize the information you extract from the events that are available to you; choose the right event processing technology to suit your specific business needs; and keep technology adoption costs down. Luckham also provides practical guidance on how EP is best integrated into an overall IT strategy and how its architectural styles differ from more conventional approaches.

Emphasizing EP examples used in a diverse range of business, including financial trading, banking, fraud detection, IT security, transportation, energy, customer relations management, and healthcare, Event Processing for Business explores:

• What event processing is
• Reasons to invest in event processing
• How and why four modern event processing technologies developed
• Basic concepts of event processing and complex event processing (CEP)
• Event streams and event clouds
• The growing marketplace for commercial event processing products
• Which businesses are using event processing and CEP today
• The kinds of business problems to which event processing is being applied
• Fundamental strategies for event processing in business: filtering, prioritization, and goal-specific methods
• More event processing concepts: event patterns, timing, causality, abstraction, and computable event hierarchies
• Abstract events and high-level views that allow you to instantly understand your competitive business situation
• Organizing abstract events for different role players in the enterprise
• The future of complex event processing in the Information Society

Event-enabled business models and systems are everywhere, and they’re here to stay. Learn how to turn real-time data into right-now actions with David Luckham’s Event Processing for Business

Turn Real – Time Events into Strategic Advantage with Event Processing for Business

Are you ready to drastically improve how your enterprise operates, take your business to higher levels, and make razor-sharp business decisions? Are you willing to make your organization more agile and event driven as you business response time accelerates? Would you like to see your profit margins soar? Learn how to make the most out of event processing technology with the help of Event Processing for Business.

Author David Luckham—a leader in event processing systems—documents the recent explosion of commercial developments in high-level event processing (EP) applied to business enterprise management. Luckham deftly illustrates how to develop, analyze, and act on real-time, actionable management information from the events flowing through your company’s networks—as well as those of your competitors.

Written for business analysts, CIOs, system integrators, technology consultants, and project managers, Event Processing for Business explores:

• What EP is, how to use it, and how it relates to other IT architectures
• How to choose the EP technology that best suits your needs
• How to adopt technology that yields the most return on your investment
• Strategies for applying EP in business and enterprise management
• How to use EP as a tool for business intelligence and a basis for planning
• The progress and probable limitations of commercial EP technology
• Future trends in EP and its pervasive supporting role in very large-scale information systems

Don’t be blindsided by real-time events. Let the power of event processing work to your strategic advantage with the tools and strategies found in Event Processing for Business.