On Mediated Event Processing

I have mentioned the term "mediated event processing" in the past, but looking at previous postings - never explained exactly what it is.

So back to the educational mission of this Blog: mediations are exactly what they mean in messaging middleware or ESBs - transforming events. There are several types of mediators.

• Enrichment: Receives an event as an input, adds attributes as a result of look up in a data store (database, spreadsheet, file) --- there are various levels of sophistications in enrichment.
• Translation: Receives an event as an input, and translate to an event that is semantically equivalent. Example: XSL/T transformation (when the event is in XML format).
• Aggregation: Receives N events and creates a single event with one or more aggregated attributes, note - this is a statefull mediation, but unlike pattern detection in CEP, the original events are not kept, there is just incremental updates of the state, thus, the state is bounded.
• Split: Recieves a single event and creates M events - either identical clones or distinct - all of them functions of the input event.
• Composition: Aggregation + Split: N input event ---> M output events.

One of the interesting questions are is MEP a subset of CEP ? -- again - this is a matter of implementation - in monolithic stand-alone engines MEP can be done by CEP engine, when CEP engine is part of a middleware, the ESB mediations may be used for this with some twist, and in agent-based EPN, agent-types may be of each of the mediators types.

BTW - I have written before about the CITT meeting in Regensburg - if you want to have more details about the presentations are now on the CITT website. My presentation can be found also on this website, as well as some other interesting stuff.. More -Later.