A Survey of Complex Event Processing Engines

This deliverable presents state-of-the-art engines for handling complex events, in order to select the most appropriate engine for the Data and Algorithms for Integrated Transportation Planning and Execution (DAIPEX) project. The most important requirement on which the engine was selected, was the ability to be used as embeddable component in Java and, therefore, the suitability for integration into any Java process.

A systematic review was used to search for the available execution engines in practice. The primary outcome of our search returned 8 execution engines. Having a list of 8 systems, we applied other criteria in order to create a shortlist. These criteria were: (1) Does the system have an executable CEP engine? (2) Does the system have an open source license? (3) Does the system have in-depth documentation? (4) Does the system support XML files as input? (5) Has the system been implemented in Java? (6) Does the system have an active developer community for communication? (7) Does the system handle historical data? We found four candidates that have most of these criteria.

We reviewed those candidates in more detail and selected the Esper engine as the engine for
further development, because it has an Open Source license and because the Esper development
team gives continuous and active support online.