Yesterday evening, Paul Vincent finished his talk in BCS event (Advanced CEP and EDA) with his last slide, recommended reading: <<The Power of Events>>.

It is a good talk. We all appreciate it. You should not expect you learn everything from a one hour event. But it is far enough to get you think about it and explore more from a list of good references.

The talk is about Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA). Recently these words are getting more attention and the the CEP technology and market are evolving because of the increasing demand for back-ending systems with a data warehouse needs real-time intelligent processing in many industrial areas.

I have heard of these word when I was exploring the Algo trading platforms, where there is a need to analyze fast moving data in real-time, with minimal latency. So think it simple, from one aspect, the CEP could be understood as a real-time business intelligence. My thought was confirmed when discussing with Paul about his example on modelling the customer behaviour as a sense&respond strategy to process the complex events in a retail banking scenario. Of course, there are much more about CEP, like track&trace, situational awareness etc etc...

EDA is not new concept but it was not as hot as SOA but it does complements SOA because services can be started by triggers such as events.

Then what is happening to these words this year? Marriage of SOA with Event Driven Architecture(EDA) and Complex Event Processing (CEP)? This is top of the news for many analysts, and something IBM, Oracle, and other vendors are positioning future offerings around. Is this the year when organizations will start linking SOA efforts closely to real-time processes?

IBM WebSphere CTO Jerry Cuomo recently said that he sees the SOA-EDA-CEP marriage as one of the most pronounced trends to watch in 2008. Yes, in January, IBM has already acquired AptSoft to expand their Business Events Software Market. IBM's CEP engine is a Java-based execution engine including a Eclipse based authoring tool.

Even CEP involves lots of computer technology, like pattern recognition, neural  network and machine learning, there is a start place for .NET developers:  NEsper, an open source component for developing CEP applications on the .NET Platform, which is looking to change the CEP development in the .NET world.