Untangling events part 3

There has been some delay in this, the third and final article on untangling events. And just as well. I initially asked the question as to whether the log and event management vendors were more likely to expand into the sensor management and complex event processing (CEP) spaces or vice versa. In the Eigenbase project, which is an advanced reference implementation of the SQL 2003 standard. SQLstream intends to make further contributions to Eigenbase.

SQLstream is initially targeting three markets: real-time ETL/ELT, operational BI, and CEP style applications such as fraud prevention (which includes monitoring things like failed log-ins). This is somewhat disparate and difficult for a relatively unknown company to manage so the major target will be real-time ETL/ELT in the first instance.

I had better explain why SQLstream is suitable for this market because it is not something that I have previously encountered as a CEP market. The rationale is this: ELT (extract, load and transform) has become increasingly popular because you can use SQL in your data warehouse to transform the data, making use of the power of the warehouse platform and eliminating the need for a powerful intermediate processor. Also, using SQL has the advantage that it is commonplace and therefore relatively inexpensive in terms of talent and resources. However, on the first point, running the transforms in the warehouse still requires a significant amount of processing power that is taken away from query processes and/or costs extra. In addition, it is still essentially a batch rather than a real-time process.

SQLstream fixes these issues by transforming data in real-time, in a streaming fashion, but still uses SQL. Neat!