Event Processing in Next SQL Server

StreamInsight, a complex event processing component, will ship with SQL Server 2008 R2 by May 2010. Complex event processing software enables applications to efficiently scan input from sources such as sensors or Web logs to detect important patterns and respond on the fly. StreamInsight will simplify development and maintenance of low-latency monitoring applications for tasks such as targeting Web advertisements. However, StreamInsight has some gaps in its development and administration tools and will require SQL Server licenses, even though it’s technically separate from SQL Server.

What’s Happening?

Complex event processing products such as StreamInsight run standing queries on streams of incoming data (the events) to detect patterns that applications interpret and act on. For example, an application might query data coming from sensors on an assembly line to calculate performance metrics and spot production problems. Complex event processing products simplify programming; developers can write relatively simple queries and rely on the product to handle low-level details, such as determining which incoming events are relevant to which queries and recalculating totals affected by a new event. Complex event processing has been used for many tasks, including algorithmic securities trading, ad targeting, and network monitoring; vendors include IBM, Oracle, Progress Software, Sybase, and Tibco.