Chapter 1. Introduction

JBoss BRMS Complex Event Processing provides the JBoss Enterprise BRMS Platform with complex event processing capabilities.

For the purpose of this guide, Complex Event Processing, or CEP, refers to the ability to process multiple events and detect interesting events from within a collection of events, uncover relationships that exist between events, and infer new data from the events and their relationships.

An event can best be described as a record of a significant change of state in the application domain. Depending on how the domain is modeled, the change of state may be represented by a single event, multiple atomic events, or even hierarchies of correlated events. Using a stock broker application as an example, a change in security prices, a change in ownership from seller to buyer, or a change in an account holder's balance are all considered to be events as a change has occurred in the state of the application domain.

Event processing use cases, in general, share several requirements and goals with business rules use cases.

From a business perspective, business rule definitions are often defined based on the occurrence of scenarios triggered by events. For example:

Both business rules and event processing queries change frequently and require an immediate response for the business to adapt to new market conditions, regulations, and corporate policies.

From a technical perspective:

Complex event processing scenarios share these distinguishing characteristics:

As such, JBoss BRMS Complex Event Processing supports the following behaviors:

The rest of this guide describes each of the features that JBoss BRMS Complex Event Processing provides.