Hype and maturity in CEP

So if you use a piece of software and you believe that, although that software is stable and working as documented, it could do more in a future version… does that make the software immature?

I find some of the arguments about CEP (Complex Event Processing) and maturity to be very strange. For example, it is very true that many people want CEP to make detecting complex causality available to untrained users. And many people also want a nicer car. But does the fact that I want a Bentley make my Mercedes immature? I want my car to fly, too. Is it immature because it can’t fly? I have read that flying cars are real, so should I be upset at my car dealership for selling me a model that is stuck on the ground?

Just because there is more work to be done in CEP, does not make CEP immature. Honestly, I can’t agree with positions like the one taken by Tim at The CEP Blog. In this post about product maturity, he says that no CEP product has ever existed. He says that in the ten years since David Luckham coined the phrase, no one has ever developed a CEP product. Even David Luckham apparantly did not envision a product that meets the “true” criteria of being CEP. Well then vendors are not trying to suppress a technology, they are simply offering to sell you technology that actually exists. Can anyone seriously say that CEP will be immature until it provides features that have not materialized despite 10 years of research? Is modern energy production immature because we should all be waiting for cold fusion?

Of course anyone would agree that providing a better interface to causality detection algorithms is a noble goal. But everyone should remember that any major advancement in this area will have very significant impact on the business world, and the use of that technology in EP will be but a part. Detecting causality is a huge deal and it is just as useful for static or stored data as for real-time events. So just remember that by asking for an easy interface to causality detection, you are not only asking for something that has never existed in the field of EP, but something that has never existed at all. All the advancements in data mining from the 50’s through today have yet to produce something that makes accurately detecting causality in complicated scenarios an easy task.

So yes, more improvements can be made to EP products. And honestly, there are plenty of simple and incremental improvements that can be made to every EP (CEP) product that I have used. For example, more adapters and language improvements. On this matter, I have to agree with Opher, who distinguishes between several kinds of maturity.

There are plenty of improvements to be made in the area of CEP (which I would call EP for Event Processing). But accusing vendors of hyping immature products? Come on. I mean seriously, we are all supposed to wait with baited breath for a class of products that has never existed? And that is what will be the real CEP? Remind me again, who is falling for hype here?