Getting closer to the peak of inflated excpectations

The Gartner hype cycle has a notion called "peak of inflated expectations", which states that different technologies go up in the hype ladder until getting to the peak, where people think that can solve much of the universe's problems, and then, somehow people realize that this is not the case and go through frustration and disillusionment, until realizing the true value (if any !), and getting back on track, now with the right set of expectations. Two recent Blog postings show some indication that we are getting closer when talking about event processing:

• Carol-Ann Matignon from Fair Issac complains in her Blog that some people say that event processing = decision management and brings some counter examples where there are decision management applications that use batch processing.
• Paul Vincent from TIBCO wonders whether CEP = continuous analytics.
  

Actually, both are right. Event processing may have a role in decision management, there are some applications of decision management that are pure event processing, some in which event processing has some role, but not doing the entire trick, and some that are really batch oriented data management. Likewise continuous analytics can be done in response to event (raw or derived) or just periodically. Event processing may or may not have a role in deciding when to do this analytics (e.g. optimize the traffic light setting), the optimization itself is typically not event processing per se.

I think that it is very good to observe that event processing can play a role in many areas, likewise, it is also good to be clear about its possible role, and which are the cases in which it has value, and which are the cases it hasn't, I guess that we'll have to wait for the enlightenment phase, in the hype cycle terminology until there will be more universal clarity about the role and value of event processing. More - Later.