Customer Reviews

The Power of Events: An Introduction to Complex Event Processing in Distributed Enterprise Systems

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is seldom that one comes across a software engineering book that is free of hype and doesn't cut corners when it comes to providing details. This book is a must-have for every software professional. You don't have to be working on a cutting edge project to benefit from this book. What this book teaches is a new way of critically thinking about complex software design and architecture. The book is masterfully written and as its Preface states, is the result of over a decade of hard-core research into event pattern matching conducted at Stanford University. This is a book that one can put to use right away, using tools and systems that are available today.

This book applies structured engineering methods to systems and software engineering, making it a unique and much needed addition to the body of knowledge. Prior to this book event processing was in the domain of embedded and realtime systems developers and hardware designers. This book shows how to effectively use these techniques in IT.

The first two chapters give reasons why complex event processing (CEP)is essential to the distributed systems that characterize supply chain, e-commerce and internet-enabled applications. They also sort out the key issues and present a paradigm for a global event cloud that is decomposed in subsequent chapters. Instead of providing an in-depth analysis of each chapter, which would make for a lengthly and boring review I'll give the highlights of what I liked:

- Architecture is an important theme throughout the book. In particular the Rapide architecture description language adds formality and structure. The key elements of Rapide are causal event modeling, event patterns/pattern matching and event pattern maps and constraints.

- Events, timing and causality, and their interrelationships, are thoroughly explained. These are the key to understanding the treatment of patterns, rules and constraints that follow, and for tackling the subsequent discussion of complex events and event hierarchies. This is slow reading, but the essence of the book.

- Event processing networks, which are a practical use of the knowledge imparted by this book. Moreover, the two case studies showed real world application of the concepts instead of abstract theory. They reinforced all of the key points made earlier in the book.

CEP is particularly applicable to enterprise application integration projects that depend on business events and network and systems management instrumentation (especially developers who write Tivoli software adapters, develop network monitoring solutions or similar endeavors).

As IT infrastructure weaves itself into every aspect of a business, managing these systems becomes an imperative. The Lines of Business demand complete and the real time visibility into the IT infrastructure. Most systems developed do not allow the IT departments to manage at these levels. Dr Luckhams book propose a framework for managing this complexity. He puts forth, in a simple and readable manner how do manage systems by observing the "Cloud of Events" and how to build systems that are easier to manage.

It is the first book that I have come across that deals with the topic of IT management at a level that is not too abstract or complete focused on existing tools, instead Dr Luckham takes the reader much closer to a solution to the problem by getting them to think about the problem in the right way. He puts years of Stanford research into a readable form for the ordinary mortal. Bravo.

If you are like me and you are frustrated after picking up an IT book and only getting superficial platitudes rather than keen insights, then you may be pleasantly surprised by this book because it really reveals, as the title states, the "Power of Events." The book starts off establishing the author's grounding in Enterprise Architectures (and their shortcomings), and then proceeds to build an intuitive foundation to seduce the reader into the world of events that they may not have realized was so much a part of distributed systems. While the formal notation used in the book may appear daunting, it is easily mastered and the subtle rules and mechanism are exposed through many thoughtful examples. I will say the second half of the book is a slower read than the 1st part, but the book should leave you with some confidence that there really are some breakthroughs in software technology that will have a positive impact on distributed IT System quality and the complex event processing shows that potential.

This book is by far the best book on event processing. Sure some of the examples may be contextually old but the concepts still very much apply today. I actually like the dot-com examples because we have all been there and done that so it's easier to see how it could have been done better using events. If you're trying to get your arms around event processing then this book will help a-lot. I highly recommend it.

This book is quite odd in that if flicks between what sounds like a dotcom consulting company pre-2000 and then to a univeristy academic and then back again quite regularly. I'm sure the academic content of the theory is flawless but it's like the author is pretending to work in in industry when in fact he's never seen outside a university. This is perhaps unfair as there's a limited amount of the ESP/CEP literature out there but don't be fooled into believing this book will be of practical use to you if you're a developer in industry being pressured into one ESP/CEP system or another, though it should cerainly be food for thought if you'd like to consider more deeply past some of the commerical implementations of ESP/CEP. If you're a software architect with no deliverables this is probably right up your street.

I have been very keen to read this book and to learn about CEP and event-driven architectures. However, I found the book rather disappointing. The introduction to CEP for global enterprises is weird, after so many years after the dotcom-bubble burst. The examples in the first parts of the book (electronic media stores) are not convincing, because they do not really need CEP or EDA. Sloppy explanations and definitions are embarrassing; several definitions are self-referring (e.g., significance and event pattern) or inconsistent (e.g., event pattern on page 114 and 116).

This book has a lot of content but it is a mix of deep insights and less relevant information. Therefore it is not a helpful book but it is very much an interesting book.

A decent book to add to the shelf and an informational read, but really nothing more.

The book provides no real insight and as another reviewer points out reads more like an advertisement. It's useful to read to get an overall view, but much better books exist on the subject and it seems to be catered primarily to the non-technical. The book uses a lot of buzz words, wraps the topics in "wouldn't it be nice" scenarios, etc. but provides no real meat or content.

All-in-all, decent to read, but provides no insight for business and/or technical decision making.

I tried to read this book. I have it on my book shelf and I can see it right now, but I really couldn't get past the introduction. For a supposedly technical book, the first chapter reads like a 1995 introduction to the 'information superhighway' and about how wonderful it will be. This sentence on page 9:
"Another example is automated trading Web sites, or "eMarketplaces" as they are called."

Then followed by the word "global eCommerce Web". It just reads like a bad commercial from IBM or BEA telling you how to 'accelerate your eCommerce to web speed'.

In theory the book should be good, but this kind of treatment really offends my technical sensibilities.