Book Review: Event Processing in Action

If you're interested -- as I am -- in event driven programming, a new book by Opher Etzion and Peter Niblett is sure to catch your interest. In fact, it's 2.48 AM and I've stayed up to finish the book. Is it any good?

The book, Event Processing in Action, published by Manning (http://www.manning.com/etzion/) is divided into logical sections, with chapters in each section:

• The Basics
  • Entering the world of event processing
  • Principles of event processing
• The Building Blocks
  • Defining the events
  • Producing the events
  • Consuming the events
  • The event processing network
  • Putting events in context
  • Filtering and transformation
  • Detecting event patterns
• Pragmatics
  • Engineering and implementation considerations
  • Today's event processing challenges
  • Emerging directions of event processing

The book is well-written and shows great depth of knowledge by the authors. They provide an in-depth scenario showing the use -- and the particular challenges -- of event driven programming.

Much of the book is not about web-based event driven programming, but about more traditional (if such a term can be applied to EDP) practice. There's a nice survey of vendor tools, with none singled out as a best practice. Instead, the authors are very fair in considering all of the aspects of EDP.

If you're new to event driven programming, the book will probably go into depths that you're not ready for. You'll still get a great deal out of the book. There's no cheerleading or hype. The authors opted for an honest presentation and discussion of both the benefits and drawbacks of working with events.

I've been working deeply with events for over three years. Understanding events has helped me tame the complexity that is a threat to any large-scale software application. But the book made me really think about what I thought I knew and opened up new areas for exploration.

Each chapter begins with a pertient quote. Chapter 7, "Putting events in context", begins with this: The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. -- Edwin Schlossberg. The book does that admirably.