This introduction briefly describes complex event processing (also known as CEP) and gives an overview of the Active Correlation Technology and its role in complex event processing.
Today, commercial and government organizations are dependent on electronic information processing through computer networks, and especially through the Internet. With additional technologies such as grid computing, organizations run mission-critical applications at any time and place in the world. Business processes, activity, and infrastructure, and thus our global society, are dependent on the information technology (IT) layer of organizations.
Organizations need to know what is happening with their business at all times. For example, they need to know whether mission-critical applications are available and working properly and how to detect and prevent a potential crisis in business processes, activity, or infrastructure. If a crisis occurs, they immediately need to understand the problem, how to fix it, and what caused it.
The significance of most events that pertain to business processes, activity, and infrastructure is never recognized or understood because the amount of information is too massive and too difficult to digest as it exists in individual, unrelated pieces. However, if the events are aggregated and correlated such that their relationships can be easily understood, they can yield a wealth of information.
The purpose of complex event processing is to get better information on events in real time.
An event is simply a notification about something that has occurred.
Complex event processing is the derivation of high-level events from the analysis, correlation, and summarization of low-level events in event-driven systems. These high-level events, called complex events, are suitable for notifying people of business opportunities or problems in easy-to-understand terms or for triggering automated processes. Organizations can then operate more efficiently, with early warning of potential opportunities or problems, and with a better understanding of the root causes that change conditions in their business processes, activity, or infrastructure.
Event correlation is the process of defining and detecting patterns in event streams in real time and of implementing actions in response to related events. It is used to identify a problem based on its detected symptoms. Events can be correlated by cause, by time, by membership, or by combinations of these. Event correlation is an integral part of complex event processing.
The Active Correlation Technology consists of the following primary items:
An Active Correlation Technology runtime environment is an application in which the Active Correlation Technology engine is embedded.