Joe McKendrick, ebizQ's SOA in Action Blogger, is a nationally published author and consultant
with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in
the technology industry. He is a contributing editor to a number of
national and international publications and Websites including
Database Trends & Applications, ZDNet, and Webservices.Org. He also
serves as analyst for Evans Data Corp., and is lead analyst for Evans'
Web services and enterprise development management issues surveys.
SOA in Action Blog
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« SOA Saves the Day at Pay-N-Pray Motors | Main | BPM and SOA: Separated at Birth; Finally Reunited! » July 30, 2007Making SOA More Eventful Many analysts predict that event-driven architecture and complex event processing represent the next leap for SOA. This leap is explored in greater detail by David Linthicum, Roy Schulte, and Dr. K. Mani Chandy, who recently posted insights here at ebizQ on event processing, and the role it is increasingly playing in SOA. Schulte and Chandy write that complex event processing, or CEP, can deliver three capabilities to the enterprise -- the ability to run faster and smarter because it has "situational awareness," can "sense-and-respond" to opportunities and threats, and can "track-and-trace" items as they go through their lifecycles. They note that "traditional application systems and most forms of BI do not provide these capabilities. The key to enabling near-real-time operational BI is event processing. Event processing has become practical for a much wider range of applications. Companies have streams of business events that did not previously exist. Companies that leverage CEP have a distinct competitive advantage over those that are unaware of the potential information value of the events that are in their midst." Essentially, CEP is about information, and the ability to move information to where it's needed, at just the right time. As Dave Linthicum points out, CEP has always been needed and desired, but "never really had a name until now." CEP addresses needs that were first seen during the formative years of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration). "We've been considering the notion of the movement of information around complex business events, in that all interested entities should have access to perfect information in real-time and can respond instantaneously as to processing these events in the best interest of the organization. CEP puts some formality around it." Schulte and Chandy agree that the concept of CEP has been around for some time now, but it's only recently that the concept has been extended to mainstream business applications. This is changing for several reasons, including the fact that "some of the design techniques and algorithms for applying rules to high-volume event streams were only invented in the last 10 years, and were brought to market in commercial software products even more recently." Plus, lower hardware and network costs have made CEP more affordable. Add to that the growth of sensors, including RFID, bar code and GPS devices. Schulte and Chandry predict that the the "killer application" for event processing is in the form of business activity monitoring, or BAM, which is appearing in the form of business dashboards tied to key performance indicators (KPIs) in near real time. What's the connection between SOA and CEP? Dave Linthicum connects the dots. CEP is "based upon the core foundations of integration, and is even more relevant in the world SOA. Indeed, as we build a SOA, we need to pay close attention to how all of the systems in the problem domain interact, and thus the paradigm of managing the interaction of these events layers into the core foundation of the architecture. Therefore, you need to consider CEP as you build and deploy your SOA." Posted by joemckendrick in SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry:
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