External data enters Sybase CEP Engine through input adapters, which translates data from an external format into a format usable by Sybase CEP Engine.
Adapters may be in-process or out-of-process. In-process adapters are executed within the Sybase CEP server process while out-of-process adapters execute in their own processes, possibly even on different machines than the Sybase CEP Engine, and communicate with the Sybase CEP server via interprocess communication mechanisms (pipes, sockets or streams).
Every external data source that provides data to Sybase CEP must be connected to its own input adapter, which must in turn be connected to a Sybase CEP data stream.
Adapters connected to data streams are also used to send Sybase CEP data to external destinations. A CCL query places its results in a data stream, which may be connected to an output adapter. The output adapter translates the data into the required external format and sends it to the external destination.
Since Sybase CEP receives data from many types of sources, Sybase CEP Engine includes an extensive adapter architecture to translate data to and from external formats. Some of these adapters ship with Sybase CEP. Others can be created using a variety of adapter Software Development Kits (SDKs) that are available for different programming languages, such as C, C++, Java 1.5 and .NET3.
For a complete discussion of the available adapters, SDKs, and their usages, please see the Sybase CEP Integration Guide.