esper.codehaus.org and espertech.comDocumentation

Preface

Analyzing and reacting to information in real-time oftentimes requires the development of custom applications. Typically these applications must obtain the data to analyze, filter data, derive information and then indicate this information through some form of presentation or communication. Data may arrive with high frequency requiring high throughput processing. And applications may need to be flexible and react to changes in requirements while the data is processed. Esper is an event stream processor that aims to enable a short development cycle from inception to production for these types of applications.

This document is a resource for software developers who develop event driven applications. It also contains information that is useful for business analysts and system architects who are evaluating Esper.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the Java programming language.

This document is relevant in all phases of your software development project: from design to deployment and support.

If you are new to Esper, please follow these steps:

  1. Read the tutorials, case studies and solution patterns available on the Esper public web site at http://esper.codehaus.org

  2. Read Section 1.1, “Introduction to CEP and event series analysis” if you are new to CEP and ESP (complex event processing, event stream processing)

  3. Read Chapter 2, Event Representations that explains the different ways of representing events to Esper

  4. Read Chapter 3, Processing Model to gain insight into EPL continuous query results

  5. Read Section 5.1, “EPL Introduction” for an introduction to event stream processing via EPL

  6. Read Section 6.1, “Event Pattern Overview” for an overview over event patterns

  7. Read Section 7.1, “Overview” for an overview over event patterns using the match recognize syntax.

  8. Then glance over the examples Section 19.1, “Examples Overview”

  9. Finally to test drive Esper performance, read Chapter 20, Performance