Greg Reemler
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:17:58 +0000
Reducing complex problems sets to simple problem sets is an interesting, and sometimes valid,approach to complex event processing.** Transformations can be useful, especially when well defined.
For example, CEP was evisioned as a new technology to debug relatively large distributed systems,discover hidden causal relationships in seemingly disconnected event space.** This �discovery� requires backwards chaining with uncertainty, for example.* Most of the current so-called �CEP software�*(on the market today (including Marc Adler�s SQL-based examples)do notperform backwards chaining (with uncertainty).** This is also true from other so-called CEP products, likemost forward chainingRETE engines*- for example, see this post.
MarcAdler says*he is, �hunting for advice from people who might have implemented event clouds in Coral8, Streambase, and Aleri, all three which are based on SQL.�
Current steaming SQL engines*cannot*modeltrue event clouds without reducing the cloud to causal-orderedsets of linear steaming*data.** These software tools are stream processing engines that process events in a time window of continuous streaming data. These productsare not, in reality,CEP engines -calling them*�CEP*engines�is marketing-speak, not technology-speak!
Reducing complex models to simple ones isa valid technique for problem solving. Likewise, eliminating uncertainty and assuming causality is a way to reduce complexity.*
CEP was envisioned todiscover causal relationships in complex, uncertain,*�cloudy*data�and the current state-of-the-art of software from the streaming SQL vendors do not have this capability, unless you reduce all event models to ordered sets of streaming data (reduce POSETS to TOSETS).
Reductionismcan bea valid technique, of course.* We can eliminate uncertainty, force strict determinism, demand apriori system rules and perform all sorts of tricks to permit us to reduce complex problems to simple ones.**
However this alsoresulting inreducing CEP* (complex event processing) to SEP (simple event processing).**
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