Quality-Aware Runtime Adaptation in Complex Event Processing

Abstract

Complex event processing (CEP) is a fundamental paradigm for a software system to self-adapt to environmental changes. CEP provides efficient means to detect (complex) events corresponding to environmental changes by performing a real-time analysis on many, possibly heterogeneous, data sources. The way current CEP systems detect events is determined at design time without accounting for dynamic changes of the environment monitored by the CEP system. This can lead to situations where the performance, quality and reliability of event detection significantly drop (e.g., due to mobility) since initial assumptions of the environment are violated or stated too general. In this paper, we propose A DAPTIVE CEP, a CEP system that is able to self-adapt to detected changes in environmental conditions. We propose a CEP query language that allows specifying changes in the behavior of the CEP system and its mechanisms in detecting events dependent on environmental conditions. This way, A DAPTIVE CEP can select the best-suited configurations for given quality demands. In our evaluation, we show by means of a reference concept how the flexibility exposed by the query language helps to achieve significant performance gains.