vincent
07-15-2008 11:28 AM
Whilst presenting a CEP Tutorial at the
OMG’s Workshop on Distributed Object Computing for Real-time and Embedded Systems [*1] this week, I re-formated the
EPTS Glossary of terminology into a
presentation format. Naturally, as one who cannot leave anything untouched or unedited, I made minor “improvements” to some of the term ordering, formatting, and examples (and added a caveat to that effect at the start). So this version is “unsanctioned”, but is more useful for presenting CEP terminology than an HTML page. Then, as luck would have it, the day after the tutorial the EPTS published its own “
document” version …
Some of the tutorial Q&A was interesting and worthy of recording:
- Is “event inheritance” a type of event derivation?
-
The discussion here covered “inheritance” at the event modeling level (handled by
TIBCO BusinessEvents, for example), as well as some kind of derivation-event operator such as for the “replacement” for some obscolete event. For example, consider observation events of an aircraft position that are updated periodically. I’m not sure I would call the latter “inherited events”, though, and I have not seen this term used as an event operator.
- Certain Defense agencies have a policy of using only standards-based (or open source [*2]) software - does this preclude the use of CEP technology?
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CEP is not a single technology, so a single standard is unlikely to apply. But CEP tools can be based on “standards” - such as
TIBCO BusinessEvents‘ use of UML Class (concept) and UML State models (and the work on UML PRR). And if you need to use open source tools - they exist for certain CEP technologies, too.
- What proportion / types of market for CEP utilise build-from-scratch versus COTS (commercial off the shelf) tools?
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Tool vendors such as TIBCO only “see” the projects we are invited to compete for. We would expect more mature CEP users (such as in financial markets) to need good reasons NOT to use COTS CEP tooling, whereas other markets are probably more susceptible to build-your-own due to a lack of awareness of COTS CEP technology - CEP is still in the early days of market understanding and acceptance. For example, many TIBCO BusinessEvents applications are “green field” in the sense that the technology is an enabling factor, allowing systems to be developed that might not have been considered feasible beforehand.
- Are there any personal CEP applications, monitoring personal (person-based) events for the benefit of the individual rather than the benefit of some government or corporation?
[1] I had suggested to the meeting organisers, given the strong presence of Vanderbilt’s Model Integrated Computing researchers here, that serious consideration be given to running the OMG DOCRES’09 event in conjunction with the Vanderbilt-hosted DEBS’09 next year, encouraging interchanges of views, wider audiences, economies of scale, reduced need for travel, etc etc.
[2] It’s a fact (of life) that creating standards is an expensive process, and “expensive” does not gel well with the development of free software. Disclaimer: TIBCO supports / develops OSS such as
TIBCO General Interface.
Source...
07-15-2008
