Introduction to SAP Sybase Event Stream Processor

SAP® Sybase® Event Stream Processor enables you to create and run your own complex event processing (CEP) applications to derive continuous intelligence from streaming event data in real time.

Event Stream Processor and CEP

Event stream processing is a form of CEP, a technique for analyzing information about events, in real time, for situational awareness. When vast numbers of event messages are flooding in, it is difficult to see the big picture. With event stream processing, you can analyze events as they stream in and identify emerging threats and opportunities as they happen. Event Stream Processor Server filters, aggregates, and summarizes data to enable better decision making based on more complete and timely information.

Event Stream Processor is not an end-user application, but an enabling technology that provides tools that make it easy to develop and deploy both simple and complex projects. It provides a highly scalable runtime environment in which to deploy those projects.

Event Stream Processor as a Development Platform

As a platform for developing CEP projects, Event Stream Processor provides high-level tools for defining how events are processed and analyzed. Developers can work in either a visual or text-oriented authoring environment. You can define logic that is applied to incoming events to:

Combine data from multiple sources, producing derived event streams that include richer and more complete information.
Compute value-added information to enable rapid decision making.
Watch for specific conditions or patterns to enable instantaneous response.
Produce high-level information, such as summary data, statistics, and trends to see the big picture, or the net effect, of many individual events.
Continuously recompute key operating values based on complex analysis of incoming data.
Collect raw and result data into a historical database for historical analysis and compliance.

Event Stream Processor Runtime Environment

As an engine for an event-driven architecture (EDA), Event Stream Processor can absorb, aggregate, correlate, and analyze events to produce new high-level events that can trigger responses, and high-level information that shows the current state of the business. Event Stream Processor:

Processes data continuously as it arrives
Processes data before it is stored on disk, thus achieving extremely high throughput and low latency, enabling better decision making based on more complete and timely information
Separates business logic from data management, making it easier to maintain the business logic and reducing total cost of ownership
Provides enterprise class scalability, reliability, and security

Events
A business event is a message that contains information about an actual business event that occurred. Many business systems produce streams of such events as things happen.
Event Stream Processor Compared to Databases
SAP Sybase Event Stream Processor complements traditional databases to help solve new classes of problems where continuous, event-driven data analysis is required.
Data-Flow Programming
SAP® Sybase® Event Stream Processor uses data-flow programming for processing event streams.
ESP Projects: Streams, Windows, Adapters, and Continuous Queries
An ESP project is like an application, consisting of a set of event streams, any other required datasources, and the business logic applied to incoming event data to produce results.
Streams Versus Windows
Both streams and windows process events. The difference is that windows have state, meaning they can retain and store data, while streams are stateless and cannot.
Getting Results from an ESP Project
Event Stream Processor has four ways to get output from a running project.
Schemas
Each stream or window has a schema, which defines the columns in the events produced by the stream or window.
Operation Codes
The operation code (opcode) of an event record specifies the action to perform on the underlying store of a window for that event.
Product Components
Event Stream Processor includes a server component for processing and correlating streams of data, a Studio environment for developing, testing, and starting applications that run on the server, and administrative tools.
Input and Output Adapters
Input and output adapters enable Event Stream Processor to send and receive messages from dynamic and static external sources and destinations. Most adapters provided can be used as input or output adapters.
Authoring Methods
Event Stream Processor Studio provides visual and text authoring environments for developing projects.
Continuous Computation Language
CCL is the primary event processing language of the Event Stream Processor. ESP projects are defined in CCL.
SPLASH
Stream Processing LAnguage SHell (SPLASH) is a scripting language that brings extensibility to CCL, allowing you to create custom operators and functions that go beyond standard SQL.