BEA tackles event-driven architecture

BEA Systems will enter the event-driven architecture space Monday with a product geared for SOA in Java environments.

This unveiling of BEA WebLogic Event Server will be coupled with an upgrade to the company's real-time server. Together, they can be used as part of a solution for high-speed, high-volume transaction environments or XTP (extreme transaction processing).

Event Server is a Java application server for handling large volumes of streaming data. It meets needs for predictable response times and complex event processing, the company said. High volumes of events are handled with the speed expected in C and C++ environments but with the lower total cost of ownership enabled by Java, according to BEA.

With Event Server, information is aggregated from distributed systems in real time. Rules are applied to discern patterns and trends, giving users the ability to respond to opportunities and threats posed by seemingly unrelated events.

"What people are trying to do is drive data to knowledge," said Guy Churchward, vice president of WebLogic Products at BEA. "As we come out of the gate, we're going to provide 50,000 complex events per second," putting the product on par with C and C++ offerings, he said.

The product serves as an infrastructure for SOA aspects by enabling high-performance computing without modification of current or planned SOA infrastructure, BEA said.

When used with BEA WebLogic Server Virtual Edition and the new BEA WebLogic Realtime Time 2.0 product, Event Server can work in XTP environments.

Part of the company's microService Architecture for SOA, Event Server supports simple Java programming, or "plain old Java objects," and the Spring Framework as well as event processing language.

A public beta for WebLogic Event Server begins on May 29 with general availability planned for this summer.

BEA's entrance into the event-processing market is another sign that the market is going mainstream, said analyst Roy Schulte, vice president of Application Strategy and Governance at Gartner.

"Oracle and Tibco are also already active in this market, and IBM, Microsoft, and SAP are expected to expand their event-processing offerings during the next 18 months," Schulte said.

"The product is potentially applicable anywhere there are high-volume event streams and a need to detect threats or opportunities quickly [with sub-second latency]," Schulte said. "Until recently, this kind of scenario was only found in niche applications, such as financial trading, telco, and network management. During the past several years, however, many new types of stream processing applications have emerged in such areas as customer experience management, credit card security and fraud detection, transportation operations, and compliance."

BEA also is announcing WebLogic Real Time 2.0, which provides guaranteed microsecond pause times for standard Java applications. Guaranteed worst-case pause times of 10 milliseconds are offered with average pause times in the sub-millisecond range. Previously, the product offered a 30-millisecond worst case.

"The neat thing about WebLogic Real Time is it gives real-time, predictable behavior to an application without having to rewrite the application, so it's automatically inherited," Churchward said.

Real Time 2.0 features a latency analyzer tool providing developers with the ability to analyze sources of latency in applications.

General availability for Real Time 2.0 is slated for this summer.