Event-Transformers for Event Driven Architecture Unite!

Bookmark Blog Post

	del.icio.us
	Digg
	DZone
	Furl
	Reddit

Robin Smith's Blog | July 11, 2007   1:54 AM | Comments (0)

I'm Robin Smith, Senior Engineering Product Manager at BEA Systems for the WebLogic Time and Event Driven (TED) Product Family. Welcome fellow "Event-transformers" to my blog. If you are here, then one can presume that you are reading all of the exciting news on the web and in the press about BEA’s new EDSOA (Event-driven SOA). Any casual observer may perhaps expect that this is just marketing "fluff", perhaps a simple "bolt on" extension to the WebLogic Server or maybe some specific implementation of a core CEP "engine" application (possibly even written in C++). Well, it's not.

So let me clarify. For some time past, the BEA team took a "step back" to consider and study the industries, and the available technologies which might be needed to effectively solve Real Time Event Driven Architecture and Event Processing Network Application demands. It was soon apparent that a totally new approach would be needed. To get to "neural-like" processing complexity and extreme low latency for the next generation Java applications, the solution should first be found in delivering a foundational runtime infrastructure that addresses the inherent deficiencies relating to latency "pauses" found in general purpose server-side Java Virtual Machines (JVMs).

Secondly, to satisfy the multitude of services required now, and in the future, for EDA applications, including Complex Event Processing, as just one service of many, a new Java container would be needed. This should also be a "deterministic" container, which could inherently and "transparently" provide a wealth of integrated real time design principles and concepts to effectively deal with other possible "middleware" latency constraints. Providing this kind of solution would enable all managed and deployed applications to meet their Enterprise functionality goals, without the need to program to any "special", complex and possibly, difficult to maintain API’s , such as the self management of memory allocations and release.

This Java container should also not be a "heavy-weight" Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition specification (or historically, J2EE) based) implementation, but a "targeted vehicle" for its real time purpose. Ideally, it should leverage all of the latest innovations, perhaps being built using an mSA (micro-services Architecture), with all of the added benefits that can offer, such as providing an OSGi backplane.

Once this "nirvana like" EDA focused container is delivered, together with the "worlds fastest" Java server-side runtime, then it is time to evolve some visually impressive and intuitive tooling to simplify the use of this middleware. These RAD and BAM capabilities will accelerate the time to production deployment of applications, enabling the Enterprise to quickly "reap" the benefits from high performance, high through-put, the ability to execute complex event processing by processing single or multiple events sources, with one or many data streams, and then to inevitably gain the associated resource benefits and financial reward. It is important to note, that these tools must not just be a "lightweight" façade, but be built on a solid, comprehensive, and Enterprise strength middleware base.

So is this all achievable? A challenge certainly, but now a new product family is about to be delivered for the industry, and thought by some, to stand-alone in a whole new category, "a flexible open systems solution domain".

Now this is yet to be seen, but these latest offerings from BEA, the WebLogic Event Server and WebLogic Real Time come "out of the gate" ready to address the real needs in this space, with benchmarking statistics arriving from the labs, showing a event/msg through-put and low latency values with the kind of numbers never thought possible with Java.

The new products become generally available worldwide on July 16, 2007, so please take some time to review the new Dev2Dev pages (coming soon), EDSOA information and then download the products for evaluation.

Here are some additional resources to get you started in the interim:

• An interview I gave: Building an Event-Driven SOA over on Arch2Arch
• Another interview by Guy Churchward: Event-Driven SOA
• A podcast on Trends in Virtualization and Event Driven Architectures
• My colleague Ruma Sanyal has just blogged about CEP Engine or Event Driven Application Server?

And lest I forget, watch this space for new Eclipse-based tooling and Monitoring dashboard value-add on features arriving very soon.

Comments