DEBS’09: Event Processing Languages
Posted by Paul Vincent
The next DEBS “tutorial” was effectively the EPTS Language Analysis group report. As a vendor not involved in this group I wondered if it would miss something that is covered (or planned) in TIBCO BusinessEvents. But instead this proved a well executed and informative session by 3 presenters covering stream processing, rules, agents, semantics, IDEs and formal theory.
A few comments from a TIBCO perspective on the content. Firstly, there was a summary slide showing all the different language approaches by vendor and research event processing systems including TIBCO (BusinessEvents). Now, guess which of the following BusinessEvents was aligned to: “Inference Rules”, “ECA rules”, “Agent oriented”, “SQL Extension”, “State Oriented” or “Imperative/script based”? Well, the first was correct, but you could also make a case for all of these being supported (events driving production rules, multiple-agents, continuous query language, state models, and what we call rule functions).
On the differences between ECA rules and production rules: event-driven inference rule engines combine the features of both Rete-based inference rules AND Event Condition Action rules. If no event is defined then the rule acts as a normal production rule; if (one or more) events are part of the rule definintion then the event(s) must occur for the rule to fire. And its not as if the rule firing order of ECA rules is standardized…
On the IDEs for event processing languages: of course many might complain that rule languages don’t have the draw-your-application simplicity of the stream-processing-via-queries community. This is because production rules used in inference engines are “declarative” - they can be defined in any order: and you can’t (or shouldn’t) draw lines between declarative rules (although creating such a diagram from the current rule definitions would work!). Instead, conventional production rule systems are often supported by a (process) diagram called a ruleflow; on the other hand, BusinessEvents supports a drag-and-drop state model diagram tool.
Overall an excellent and informative session - sorry, tutorial!
Tags: DEBS, ECA, EPTS, IDE, Query language, Rules
Complex Event Processing (CEP), Meetings and events | 06 July 2009 |
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By Paul Vincent, July 7, 2009 @ 07:16
Opher posted the slides on slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net/opher.etzion/debs2009-event-processing-languages-tutorial - recommended viewing for its coverage of some of the commercial CEP language approaches…
By Paul Vincent, July 17, 2009 @ 11:16
Opher also posted this in Tim Bass’ LinkedIn CEP blog… which has the usual interesting dialog from Tim!
By opher etzion, July 19, 2009 @ 23:09
Hi Paul. It seems that Tim Bass did not understand your British subtle humor and thought that you seriously meant that you need education from him on what event processing is…
cheers,
Opher
By Paul Vincent, July 20, 2009 @ 02:01
Hi Opher - the saying which I try and keep in mind on these sorts of discussions - and of course applies to me too
- is :
“Opinion is interesting… but irrelevant”. [source: Pragmatic Marketing]
Basically it means “supply the facts, or shut up”. Usually it is prefaced with “Your [opinion]…” but then it comes across as too direct!
[Opher followed up (on one of the other claims made) on his blog. More worrying was the reply there implying that the LinkedIn blog might be censuring requests to join... hmmmm who would do that and why?].
Cheers
By Hans, August 28, 2009 @ 15:32
FWIW Tim Bass has a history of this. Here is a quote from an email in which he refused me access to the EPRAWG Yahoo Group:
“I do not want you in my working group, for many reasons. Go work in a working group where you are not going to pick fights with the lead moderator and co-chair who founded the group.”
By Paul Vincent, August 30, 2009 @ 11:10
Hi Hans - I’m amazed - that does not sound like someone understanding the concept of “community forums” to me.
Cheers