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Benchmarking complex event processing systems

Objective

Many IT systems consist of several distributed pieces of software processing thousands of events (or messages) per second. Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a new area at the intersection of relational databases and data stream systems that promises to discover, in near-real time, relevant information hidden in the million of events processed by IT systems.

As an example, a CEO of one CEP company described an application that, using RFID technology, detects and locates missing children in amusement parks even before the parents notify the child is missing. A number of companies in the US have just made available their first CEP products.

However, the products were developed by people from different backgrounds: arbitrage companies, query language researchers, data stream developers, and database vendors. The different backgrounds and the rush to beat the competition lead to a fragmented market: essentially every CEP product has a different query language, semantics, feature set, and performance concerns. This market fragmentation is not just unfortunate; it also stifles research.

The CEP field looks today as the database field looked 30 years ago: competing data models and lack of standards and benchmarks. In databases, SQL and the relational model were eventually accepted, benchmarks proposed and a common ground was found. Scientists proposed new algorithms, which could then be applied to a large product base and the database field exploded into a multi-billion dollar market with first-class research ideas yea r after year.

This is a great time for Europe to step into this new field, and lead it. In that direction, we propose an important first step: Benchmarks for CEP systems (BiCEPs). BiCEPs can help unify the CEP market, can help the discovery of the fundamental scientific CEP issues, and can help researchers evaluate new algorithms. Developing BiCEps can also lead to collaborations with some of the CEP companies and possibly new, European, CEP products.

Call for proposal

FP6-2004-MOBILITY-12
See other projects for this call

Coordinator

FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS E TECNOLOGIA DA UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
EU contribution
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Address
Rua Sílvio Lima, Polo II
COIMBRA
Portugal

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