BEA Systems takes complex computing events
very seriously.
The software maker made that clear today when it announced BEA WebLogic
Event Server, a Java application server geared to handle loads of streaming
data and complex event processing (CEP) in real time.
WebLogic Event Server collates information from distributed systems on the
fly and applies rules to discern patterns and trends that typically go
unnoticed. The software is essentially another tool companies can use to
find and respond to opportunities and threats.
The product comes as startups such as Coral8,
Streambase and others market
CEP platforms that run real-time queries on high-speed data from systems,
databases and applications. CEPs can significantly boost the performance in
service-oriented architecture (SOA)
environments.
But Guy Churchward, vice president of WebLogic Products for BEA, said those
products, mostly written for C or C++ environments, don’t properly handle
event requirements in real time and with high predictability for Java.
For example, Churchward said financial services customers requested such a
product because they were struggling to drive data feeds through an event
correlation engine into a position where they could make a decision on them.
“These applications are traditionally written in C and C++ and are not wired
for the amount of data feeds that are now capable in the market,” Churchward
said. “So customers want to rewrite the applications. And so you get this
classic religious war around Java and C++.
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.
More broadly, the move underscores BEA’s embrace of event-driven
architecture (EDA), which lets businesses absorb copious and unpredictable
data flooding, and make intelligent business decisions around that data.
WebLogic Event Server, the first BEA product to be completely based on the
company’s microService Architecture (mSA), goes into public beta for
WebLogic Event Server tomorrow, with general availability this
summer.
Churchward said the Event Server is the next logical step in processing
after the determinism and predictability of the company’s WebLogic Real Time
server, which was built to
guarantee customers microsecond pause times for standard Java applications
with no special coding.
To that end, Churchward said that BEA is preparing the next version of
WebLogic Real Time, 2.0, for a summer launch.
Thanks to new methods for bounding latency, WebLogic Real Time 2.0 boasts a
“guaranteed worst-case” pause time of 10 milliseconds and average pause
times as low as sub-milliseconds, down from the software’s previous
30-millisecond worst case.
This speedy processing makes it a no-brainer application server for
financial trading systems.
WebLogic Real Time 2.0 also includes a latency analyzer tool that helps
developers analyze and tune latency sources without impacting the
performance of the application.
Complex Events? BEA Has ‘Em Covered
