When event processing should be used?

The event processing manifesto, chapter 1, deals with the question - why event processing should be used.
The idea is a service to the community to educate and help resolve misconceptions and confusions that exists among some people on the role and usefulness of event processing approach and platforms.


The slide above is a table copied from the document (table 1.1) which sets the main decision criteria:

• Event driven nature
• Events rate
• Application complexity
• Timeliness

In the table there are various combinations and recommendations.


The event driven nature is, of course, a major factor.  Applications with medium and high event driven nature will naturally gain more than applications with low event driven content.   


The event rate is another factor - although it determines more of the non functional requirements than the decision whether event processing should be used.   However, the higher the event rate is, the higher the benefit of using optimized framework.


The application complexity has various dimensions - I will discuss application complexity in a separate posting, but as seen in the previous posting, the higher the complexity is, there is more benefit to use event processing platforms.


Last but not least is timeliness - if timeliness is high,  then again there is a benefit of using event processing platforms, if timeliness is low and complexity is high, it depends on what exactly are the complexity characteristics of the specific applications.   


More on application complexity and no the manifesto - later.