Tim Bass
Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:15:53 +0000
In my last post, Analytical Patterns for Complex Event*Processing, I provided an overview of a few slides I presented in March of 2006 atfirst event processing symposium*titledProcessing Patterns for Predictive Business.* In that same presentation (slide 15), I also introduceda generichigh level architecture (HLA)for event processing in the illustration below:
The figure above is a application of historical work,more than a decade ago,in distributed blackboard architectures applied to complex event processing.
The genesis of theblackboard architectural conceptwas inthe field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address issues of information sharing among multiple heterogeneous problem-solving agents.As the name suggests, the term �blackboard architecture�is a processing metaphorwhere intelligent agentscollaborate around a blackboard to solve a complex problem.
Basically, the HLA consists oftwo key functional elements, (1) distributed data set (the �blackboard�) and �knowledge sources� (KS) that function as (self actuated or orchestrated) intelligent agents working together to solve complex problems.**
When I was first introduced to Dr. David Luckham�s book, The Power of Events: An Introduction to Complex Event Processing in Distributed Enterprise Systems, Iimmediately understoodthat distributed (complex) event processing, which included an event processing network* (EPN) and collaborative distributed event processing agents (EPAs), follow the same generic architectual pattern as other distributed, collaborative problem-solving software architectures. This also made perfect sense to meconsidering Dr. Luckham�s strong background in AI at Stanford.
In a nutshell, in my mind, �CEP engines� should operate as intelligent agents collaborating to solve complex distributed computing problems.** Professionally, I have muchstronger interest in collaborative distributed agent-basednetwork computing that stand-alone event processing.
An exciting complimentary technology for complex event processingis distributed objectcaching and grid computing, which I will discuss in more detail in a later post. Together, these architectures, analyticsand technologies helppaint a*total picture of the future of event processing, at least in my mind.