Event Processing: Designing IT Systems for Agile Companies:

Much of my work involves integration of mainframe and web applications, and I originally chose this book to get an overview of the advantages that Event Processing might provide for sharing information across diverse platforms. While it has proven to be a comprehensive guide to Event Processing, the primary benefit I’ve gained from it so far has been a completely unexpected breakthrough in the redesign of a large legacy COBOL system. Our past attempts to modernize this system employed standard SOA techniques, breaking the functions into separate modules but leaving the data flow basically unchanged. It was this book which helped us to realize that it was not just the monlolithic nature of the programs that made this system cumbersome, but also the tight coupling and interdependence of the functions, even in modular form. By employing the Event Processing Network concept, we redefined the pieces of our cycle as complex events, with both synchronous and asynchronous aspects to the processing. The resulting design promises sufficient benefits in both maintenance and daily operation to justify the rewrite. The book also aided in getting approval for the system renovation, by helping some of the non-IT managers to better understand the business advantages inherent in the new design.

While much of the material presented in this book is common sense after you’ve read it, it helps to see it laid out clearly and explained in a way that everyone can understand. In our case, the thorough coverage pointed out an application of Event Processing that we had completely overlooked.