The Power of Events: An Introduction to Complex Event Processing in Distributed Enterprise Systems [Hardcover]

As global information systems become ever more powerful, complex, and intertwined, companies need new approaches to extracting information, transforming it into intelligence, and acting on it. David Luckham introduces a breakthrough solution that offers compelling benefits at every level and scale of the enterprise: Complex Event Processing (CEP). Luckham first identifies key challenges faced by today's enterprise information systems, and demonstrates the "event-driven" nature of management in the electronic enterprise. He then introduces CEP, showing how it can harness the power of events to automate management without compromising managers' control. Luckham illuminates fundamental concepts such as events, causality, event hierarchies, event patterns, and rules; then shows how these concepts can be used to solve key enterprise management problems. In Part III, he presents a realistic description of what it takes to build CEP applications that scale to real world problems, introducing the new RAPIDE event pattern language. The book concludes with detailed case studies that show Luckham's CEP tools at work in the enterprise.

Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a defined set of tools and techniques for analyzing and controlling the complex series of interrelated events that drive modern distributed information systems. This emerging technology helps IS and IT professionals understand what is happening within the system, quickly identify and solve problems, and more effectively utilize events for enhanced operation, performance, and security. CEP can be applied to a broad spectrum of information system challenges, including business process automation, schedule and control processes, network monitoring and performance prediction, and intrusion detection.

The Power of Events introduces CEP and shows specifically how this innovative technology can be utilized to enhance the quality of large-scale, distributed enterprise systems. The book describes the challenges faced by today's information systems, explains fundamental CEP concepts, and highlights CEP's role within a complex and evolving contemporary context. After thoroughly introducing the concept, the book moves on to a more detailed, technical explanation of CEP, featuring the Rapide™ event pattern language, reactive event pattern rules, event pattern constraints, and event processing agents. It offers practical advice on building CEP-based solutions that solve real world IS/IT problems.

Readers will learn about such essential topics as:

• Managing the open electronic enterprise in the "global event cloud"
• Process architectures and on-the-fly process evolution
• Events, timing, causality, and aggregation
• Event patterns and event abstraction hierarchies
• Causal event tracking and information gaps
• Multiple views and hierarchical viewing
• Dynamic process architectures
• The Rapide event pattern language
• Event pattern rules, constraints, and agents
• Event processing networks (EPNs)
• Causal models and event pattern maps
• Implementing event abstraction hierarchies

Several comprehensive case studies illustrate the benefits of CEP, as well as key strategies for applying the technology. Examples include the real-time monitoring of events flowing between the business processes of collaborating enterprises, and a hierarchically organized set of event-driven views of a financial trading system. One of the case studies shows how to apply CEP to network viewing and intrusion detection.

The book concludes with a look at building an infrastructure for CEP, showing how the technology can provide a significant competitive advantage amidst the myriad of event-driven, Internet-based applications now coming onto the market.