Event Processing: Designing IT Systems for Agile Companies

7Events and Complex Events

Events and event objects are the fundamental building blocks in event-processing application systems. Identifying and specifying the right events to use to address a particular business problem is an important and nontrivial activity. This chapter explores the issues involved in event object design. We’ll start by taking a closer look at the nature of events and event data. Then we’ll explain the characteristics of complex events, how they are computed, and their relationship to simple events.

Defining “Event” in Earnest

The experts in this field don’t entirely agree on the best way to define events and event objects. We are aware of three major schools of thought (other good definitions may also exist):

State-change ...