Two false statements and a fun fact about CEP
March 4, 2009
Some comments on recent posts about Complex Event Processing (CEP) products.
False statement #1: CEP software is “smart” or inherently mathematical. False. CEP products are programmer tools for handling messages coming in over the network. They are not mathematical marvels and they are definitely not “smart”. They just help you write event processing logic.
False statement #2: CEP software can’t handle probability or it can only handle simple types of probability. Also false. Again, CEP software is a tool. Nothing stops you from implementing probabilistic reasoning with CEP software. Plenty of people do this. Similarly, nothing stops you from implementing very sophisticated probabilistic reasoning with CEP software. For example, many CEP products come with the ability to manipulate the types of data structures that are frequently used in machine learning algorithms. Mileage may vary, given that different products have different capabilities.
Fun fact about CEP: While CEP is currently a brand name with little underlying, usable theory… the industry is working on changing this. The Event Processing Technical Society aims to organize many aspects of Event Processing into a cohesive field, and they seem to be making good progress of late.
