Posted By Tim Bass
At the last meeting of the Event Processing Technical Society I enjoyed excellent discussions about event processing with engineers from BEA, who were very interested in CEP. Now, it comes as no surprise that BEA has entered the CEP space by unveiling the BEA Weblogic Event Server:
“Churchward said WebLogic Event Server fits perfectly because it uses Java, which doesn’t require compilations every time the customer wants to change a rule. The software handles 50,000 complex events per second and applies 10,000 rules against those events.
This lets customers build their applications on the platform without integrating a CEP engine with a separate general purpose platform; in this regard, the server saves businesses the acquisition costs of having to buy a separate CEP engine.
WebLogic Event Server also supports simple Java (POJO) programming and the Spring Framework, as well as an Event Processing Language (EPL) that augments and extends SQL for event processing.”
Soon, we will know more details, including what flavor of rules engine BEA is using. Here is what BEA says on their web site:
BEA WebLogic Event Server is the first and only Java container for high-performance event-driven applications. These applications have one or more of the following characteristics:
- Some or all application inputs are “events” – meaningful state changes that are unpredictable and that potentially trigger other activities.
- Large volumes of streaming events.
- Need to discern complex event patterns or correlations across different event sources.
- Need to discern complex event patterns or correlations across time.
- Need to respond in real time.
- Highly predictable response times.
- Must be developed in a standard Java environment to decrease total cost of adoption/ownership and increase portability and modularity.
It has not been revealed (yet) if BEA is using an evolution of the Rete algorithm. Maybe BEA will start contributing to the lively engine-related discussions in this area, now that they have unveiled their entry into the CEP space!
BTW: From this link, we can see that BEA is using SL for a part of their CEP dashboarding strategy.
The Complex Event Processing Blog 
Hi Tim,
It was my pleasure to meet you in the last Event Processing meeting. This is indeed very interesting technology and I am very pleased to have started working on this.
And yes, we will try to participate in the dynamic and energetic CEP discussions.
I know BEA wrote their own RETE engine a few years back. It would be interesting if BEA revived that engine and build a CEP engine around it.
We are glad to announce that Esper was the engine of choice for BEA, see http://www.espertech.com/news/20070717_bea.php