BEA Systems has entered the event-driven architecture market with a product geared for SOA in Java environments.
The announcement of BEA WebLogic Event Server is being coupled with an upgrade to the company’s real-time server. Together, they can be used as part of software infrastructure for high-speed, high-volume transaction environments or XTP (extreme transaction processing), according to the company.
Event Server is a Java application server for handling large volumes of streaming data. It meets needs for predictable response times and complex event processing, the company says. High volumes of events are handled with the speed expected in C and C++ environments but with the lower total cost of ownership enabled by Java, according to BEA.
With Event Server, information is aggregated from distributed systems in real time. Rules are applied to discern patterns and trends, giving users the ability to respond to opportunities and threats posed by seemingly unrelated events.
“What people are trying to do is drive data to knowledge,” says Guy Churchward, vice president of WebLogic Products at BEA.
“As we come out of the gate, we’re going to provide 50,000 complex events per second”, putting the product on par with C and C++ offerings, he says.
The product serves as an infrastructure for SOA aspects by enabling high-performance computing without modification of current or planned SOA infrastructure, BEA says.
When used with BEA WebLogic Server Virtual Edition and the new BEA WebLogic Realtime Time 2.0 product, Event Server can work in XTP environments.
Part of the company’s micro-Service Architecture for SOA, Event Server supports simple Java programming, or “plain old Java objects”, and the Spring Framework, as well as event processing language.
A public beta for WebLogic Event Server has begun and general availability is planned for this northern summer.
BEA’s entrance into the event-processing market is another sign that the market is going mainstream, says analyst Roy Schulte, vice president of Application Strategy and Governance at Gartner.
“Oracle and Tibco are also already active in this market, and IBM, Microsoft and SAP are expected to expand their event-processing offerings during the next 18 months,” Schulte says.
BEA has also announced WebLogic Real Time 2.0, which provides guaranteed microsecond pause times for standard Java applications. Guaranteed worst-case pause times of 10 milliseconds are offered with average pause times in the sub-millisecond range. Previously, the product offered a 30-millisecond worst case.
Real Time 2.0 also features a latency analyser tool, giving developers the ability to analyse sources of latency in applications. General availability for Real Time 2.0 is slated for September.