Active Technologies for Complex Event Processing

Opher Etzion

IBM Research Lab in Haifa

Analysts have designated complex event processing as an emerging area in 2003. While classic event processing system has implemented the ECA (Event-Condition-Action) paradigm, meaning that a reaction is to an occurrence of a single event, in complex event processing, the reaction can be to a (possibly) complex combination of events. Examples:

The audience will learn what complex event processing is, what are the type of applications it is used for, what the basic components of complex event are processing, what is the state of the art, and where this area is going to. The talk will have two parts: the first one will be a mini-tutorial to the area, explaining its origins from real-time systems and active databases, and the rule-base approach, and how it compares to other types of business rules. The second part will concentrate on the work done by the Active Technologies department of IBM Haifa Research lab in this area, including rule based approach as well as model based approach, and presenting some use cases, in various domains.

About the speaker

Dr. Opher Etzion is a senior manager in IBM Research Laboratory in Haifa, Israel. He has been one of the pioneers of the "active databases" technology, and deals with the issues of event-driven programming, data-driven programming and temporal processing for 27 years. In parallel he teaches and supervises Ph.D. students at the Technion - Israeli Institute of Technology, where he has been in the past full-time faculty member, and founding head of the Information Systems Engineering department and graduate program. He published more than 50 papers in these areas; he also published some poetry in early days. In recent years he works (together with a large team) on applying these concepts into IBM products and services. Prior to his PhD studies, he worked in SAPIENS, and before that in the Israel Air-Force, where he awarded the Air-Force Commander award (the highest Air-Force award), for introduction of new technologies.