Multiple Mediator Example

SCI-Flex provides an extension that connects the Open Source CEP System, Esper with the Apache Synapse ESB. Due to various possible formats of messages being exchanged between the two components, SCI-Flex extensions for Synapse-Esper mediation comes in several flavors. As of now, we have two mediators, namely the XMLMediator, which operates on XML DOM information, and the AxiomMediator, which operates on Axiom based Tree representations of XML.

Necessarily, XML and Axiom are two different ways one could look into the same problem, but, depending on the scenario, one is always better than the other. There can also be situations where the ESB and CEP communicate with information flowing from various sources. This leads to situation which would perhaps reqire both the mediators in action rather than one.

Each SCI-Flex mediator communicates with a specific instance of Esper CEP system, and adding two mediators would necessarily add two instances of Esper unless otherwise explicitly stated. This can be challenging as there can be queries that span across data handled by both the mediators. The solution is simple. It requires us to share a single instance of the CEP engine.

How it is done is what is important. Each instance of the CEP engine needs to be configured before it being used. According to how the mediator is being implemented, each mediator has the capability of configuring the CEP engine. Thus, it is important to decide on who configures the CEP engine. We have used a standard way of configuring the CEP engine in the first mediator lying in the mediation path.

Once configured, a unique instance URI can be used to access the shared CEP instance. A more detailed example that uses two event sources, a web service and a timer, is found in here.

Role of a CEP System in Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is a concept in where various services are made available through a cloud ( a network of resources which is a part of the internet), to users, without any knowledge, control, or privileged access to the underlying infrastructure that provides services. The services are necessarily IT related business applications that are more or less extensions to the traditional computing systems.

Clouds that provide services are backed by huge infrastructures of resources and handle large number of clients or users to which it provides services. The number of clients serviced by a particular cloud at any given instance can be in the magnitude of millions to billions depending on the type of service provided. This gives rise to the importance of a proper event management system in order to track usage and assist workflows.

Complex Event Processing Systems are vested with the capability of handling large streams of events and identifying useful patterns and trigger events based on them. Thus, it is clearly evident that a CEP system is perhaps the ultimate event manager or synchronizer demanded by a cloud. But, the biggest question is how to integrate a CEP system to the cloud with minimal effort.

SCI-Flex is a good example of how one could leverage the capabilities of a CEP system in event management in cloud computing. The infrastructure provided by SCI-Flex easily blends to the infrastructure of a cloud that provides services. The system can in fact be positioned as a central hub or a cluster of nodes and still have the same experience due to the way in which it being implemented.

We are hoping to add more information on integrating SCI-Flex to your cloud. Join the SCI-Flex developer list to learn more.

Internet Relay Chat Discussion Channel

SCI-Flex being an Open Source project from its inception works primarily around a developer mailing list. However, in order to speed up the development activities and to have real time chat between developers, we decided that it would be better to have a public discussion channel on our behalf. Do to the immense popularity and guaranteed stability and 24/7 service found in the freenode IRC network we decided that it would be great to host the SCI-Flex discussion channel on freenode.

Since SCI-Flex is an Open Source project and since we need to reveal all forms of communication and important project related discussions to all the members of the community, it would invariably be good to have the channel publicly logged and also available to anyone interested in seeing it. Due to limitations we experience, so far there isn't a public chat log in place. We are at present working on this feature and expect to have this in place by the end of August 2008.

We invite all those who are interested in SCI-Flex to join ##sci-flex @ chat.freenode.net. More information on freenode can be found here. You can learn about IRC in here. Pidgin and Mibbit (web based) are some of the IRC clients I use.