In a blog post about CEP being considered a supporting act for BPM and other technologies, Raimer von Ammon of CITT (University of Regensburg, Germany) commented about the EU proposal for a “U-CEP” (Ubiquitous CEP) research programme. In that comment Rainer mentioned the connection between CEP (an IT paradigm around events) and Biology (covering event-driven neural and evolutionary systems - Epigenetics and Brain Research) which form part of the U-CEP EU research programme proposal. Rainer has kindly elaborated some more on this topic, which IMHO is worthy of a separate post on this blog … and I note has parallels to one of James Odell’s posts on the “inside of an agent”…

Two or three recently emerging disciplines yield to a similar paradigm in order to explain how the environment (actually the universe of global event clouds) and their processing by sensors (respectively receptors and the activation of effectors) drive our daily life, but also the whole evolutionary process of life on our earth since the Big Bang.

The discipline of the New Biology or Epigentics has detected - on the basis of the nanotechnology, microbiology and cell biology – within the last years that the life of cells is determined by its physical and energetic environment and not by their genes. Genes are only the molecular “blue print”, the design pattern, on which the structure or architecture of cells, tissue and organs is based. But the environment as a global cloud of signals, energies or so called events are at the end responsible for the way of life of a cell. In each single cell the mechanisms of life are triggered by the processing of the “events” of its environment and not by its genes.

Since “quantum physics” and the “Heisenberg uncertainty relation” we know today that such events are at last energy as eddies of quarks and photons, but we can define different types of events, also on the physical level. Around 3.5 billion years ago the first monads as bacilli and algae lived on the earth, 650 millions of years ago the multicellular organisms as trees and other plants were created as a more complex and more intelligent life, and since around only 100,000 years the today’s human is a united cell structure of 50 trillions of single cells where each cell is doing event processing on the base of its receptors of its cell membrane. So, a human being can allegedly process 120,000 events per second unconsciously (by the right side of the brain), but logically a human can only process around (I guess) 7 or a few information units at the same time (by the left side of the brain).

Against this background CEP is based on a very similar model. EPAs (event processing agents) are actually cells where event adaptors are the receptors of a cell membrane and the event processing logic based on an EPL (event processing language) are the effectors of a cell. EPNs (event processing networks) are actually a united multicellular structure and so on.

The Epigenetics explains how the environmental signals (events) control the activity of the genes. The primacy of the DNA is no longer valid, and the new found information flow is now called the “primacy of the environment”. Recent experiments of The Epigeneitcs have proved that our beliefs and thinking is energy in the sense of environmental signals. The Epigenetics found that all these kinds of environmental signals influence the regulating proteins which control the activity of the genes and that the global event cloud as environmental signals influences and changes the DNS (so called reverse transcriptase).

What is an individual?
According to the Epigenetics an individual is determined by the sum of its receptors in the cell membrane of all its 50 trillions of (specialized) cells. Each individual is unique because it is controlled or driven by the protein machines of its cells as a result of the received events (signals) of the global event cloud of the universe. The global event cloud does always exist and each event is an undestroyable energy which exists always and forever (see Unus Mundus and space-time continuum).

The Epigenetics explains an individual as an analogy of a broadcasting of television programs where the adjustment buttons are the receptors of the cell membranes which determine which program we receive in which manner. If we add or switch off receptors, we receive a different program or we see the same program differently. This can be understood as the incarnation of an individual. On the basis of such a model we can explain phenonemas like reincarnation or time travel as well.

Results of the recent Brain Research
On the basis of recent experiments of the Brain Research, researchers like Wolf Singer, Gerhard Roth et al. claim that a free will does not exist. They believe that their experiments have proven that the brain region which is responsible for a deliberate decision is only later activated when a signal or event is received while the protein machinery as the activity activator was already started “long” before. This cognition that there is no free will could be supported by the Epigenetics and the functionality of a cell membrane and its receptors and effectors/event adaptors and EPA’s as the basis of the whole protein machinery and as the motor of life.

“If you think you think you only think you think” versus “Cogito ergo sum” (Descartes) …”

For the U-CEP course/textbook I’m gathering some materials since some time which I’ll add to the U-CEP doc within the next days; here are some nice video lectures as a basis for U-CEP enhancements/projects, e.g. from Bruce Lipton, I like him as a great guy and great lecturer:

http://epigenetics.uni-saarland.de/en/home/ (German language only)
http://www.tonyb.freeyellow.com/id68.html
http://www.veoh.com/collection/AgriculturalNews/watch/v378752sbRFQa3F# (video)

Great to hear that TIBCO might support such U-CEP ideas, perhaps Larry Ellison or also Bill Gates would be interested in supporting such things … as an investment in the future

Opher Etzion wrote an interesting blog responding to analyst Phil Howard, which in turn provoked another response by Rainer Ammon. Phil had commented that the recent developments in event processing pointed to a convergence with “BPM” (and - per his own prediction and with somewhat less evidence - Data Warehousing).

• Phil says:
  …Then there was IBM’s acquisition of AptSoft in 2008, …with an emphasis on integration with business process management. And, of course, Oracle and TIBCO are doing much the same thing…
  I cannot speak for Oracle (who AFAIK have continued to develop the BEA event server as a part of the Oracle EDA and BAM, not BPM,  suite), but in TIBCO, CEP technology is considered an adjunct to BPM. Or course there are a number of patterns we see using CEP and BPM together, but in no way can TIBCO CEP be considered emphasising integation with TIBCO BPM. Indeed, more TIBCO customers use CEP together with SOA (AMX BusinessWorks) than with TIBCO BPM (iProcess or AMX BPM)…
• Phil adds:
  …So, the clear trend is towards integrating complex event processing with other types of process management, though these may not necessarily be with business process management per se…
  So, what process management is not business process management? Indeed we do see “business processes” implemented using CEP: this is the event/pattern - decision - action cycle that CEP tools provide. Instead of “integrating with”, think “more agile or dynamic business processes”. And although events provide great integration mechanisms, the implication that CEP is a mere “supporting act” is not seen so much in practice.
• Phil concludes:
  Indeed, we will have to wait to see if complex event processing becomes completely subsumed into other technology areas and, if so, what new acronyms the industry can come up with: what is the acronym for a convergence of complex event processing and business process management?
  Conveniently for Phil, Rainer has already coined “edBPM” for event driven BPM.
• Opher gives the wise man’s response:
  This is a similar situation to databases; database can be used for various reasons, and also be embedded with various other technologies and products…
  Which makes perfect sense: CEP technology can be used standalone and in supporting roles, and different vendors will see different markets and focus different technologies for each…
• Rainer adds a comment containing an interesting quote from a European solutions provider (who is not, AFAIK, working in the CEP space):
  CEP a lot was indeed now written all over the world and spun very much, and unfortunately it is also an unusual amount of charlatanism… A machine for example runs with very continuous transitions through the phase space of their operating states. The prediction of a complex event would be in this case e.g. the simple need for maintenance, even for conditions that were never previously in this exact combination … Even this simple example could solved only in a combination of methods.
  As it happens I have a nice successful CEP-based counterexample here.

From the last point, there is still seemingly a lot of education required for systems integrators and their architects and software designers - especially if they want to be involved in “charlatan event processing applications”! Luckily CEP vendors like TIBCO have partners folk who are more than happy to arrange webinars and talks about CEP and event processing to these folk. Just drop your TIBCO rep a line!

David Luckham’s complexevents.com pointed me to a Dr Dobbs journal article by Adrian Bridgwater titled “Complex Event Processing: IT Liberator or Over-Engineering Hell?”, which starts with the question:

“[do] Complex Event Processing (CEP) tools and engines spells good news or bodes ill for our technology future. Specifically, I’d like to question whether CEP represents a highly agile customer-influenced IT delivery driver, or whether CEP will pervade (and ultimately “invade”) our use of technology to the point where it becomes insidious.”

The 2 options Adrian mentions are not mutually exclusive though: CEP and CEP-based information technologies can BOTH provide agile IT delivery AND be pervasive - although why that should equal insidious I don’t know. In some respects “event processing” is already pervasive - on your GUI’s, smartphones etc. CEP is in some respects just moving the advantages of the “event viewpoint” in IT down the chain towards other IT services.

Adrian goes on to mention:

“CEP technologies may soon migrate downward from mission-critical high-end deployments to affect the software that (for example) runs in the geolocation device in your cellphone… As you stroll through the mall, your device starts to alert you of special offers relating your consumer spend behavior…”

“May soon” is out of date and should be replaced by “Are already”! The “mall-offer-smartphone” use case is already done for at least one retail customer in TIBCO (and another such system was demo’d at TUCON in May this year).

The third and last problem with the article is that it mentions some small vendor’s hype - “programmers have struggled to tap into the fabric of events happening across the enterprise. This has left CEP engines lacking the data required to make an impact…” - which is such rubbish I’m amazed Dr Dobbs published it. Haven’t they heard of middleware? That pretty much all CEP engines plug into said middleware? And that such middleware effectively *embodies* the “event cloud” in many businesses?

Then I realised this article was in the Windows/.NET section of Dr Dobbs. OK, that might explain the thoughts above, but perhaps we would have expected at least one reference to the latest Microsoft offering on stream processing…

At the OMG standards meeting today presenting to a “packed audience” on Business Rule Standards on Production Rules and Decisioning… basically introducing the OMG PRR (version 1) and OMG DMN (pre-RFP) specifications. However, as talking metamodels and roles and graphical models etc risked sending even the most ardent standards-supporter asleep, I thought to interject some educational value of a different kind into the presentation - to wit, 1-page “tutorials” on what does it mean to be a “Rete-type” and “inference” rule engine. Sadly we didn’t have time to do the accompanying certification test in this session.

So… here are the condensed versions of “all you need to know” about Rete-type rules and Inference rules (with apologies to Charles Forgy and all the other rule engine designers and implementers out there…).

Click on the images for the PDF versions of these, er, “courses”.

Disclosure: both these characteristics are covered by OMG PRR, and used in the TIBCO BusinessEvents inference engine…

TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadive presented his “2 second advantage” at TUCON’s kickoff - having enough info, 2 seconds before anyone else, lets you make critical decisions in real-time to the advantage of your business. Getting cross-sell messages to you as you walk past a store, not beyond when you are at home. Having an airline tell you where your bag is, not you finding out by waiting in a baggage hall.

Vivek describes this as “Enterprise 3.0″ - where everything is an event. Enterprise 2.0 was “find out after the event”, treat everything as a transaction to be stored and analysed later - which can’t handle the event explosion. In a nutshell, Enterprise 2.0 is pull, Enterprise is 3.0 is push. The database is no longer the center of IT - the importance has shifted from “data” to “event”.