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Understanding Differences and Similarities of TIBCO BusinessEvents and TIBCO Streambase

Before we come across the situation of drawing the detailed border between both the products, we should not forget that both the products started with different perspectives to solve the Complex Event Processing (CEP) Problem.

TIBCO BusinessEvents (BE) was developed as a TIBCO's approach to solving the CEP. On the other hand, StreamBase was originally the product of StreamBase Systems which was then acquired by TIBCO on June 11, 2013, and rebranded as now known TIBCO StreamBase. Where TIBCO's CEP product TIBCO BusinessEvents was primarily focused to be an Event-Driven Tool to solve the CEP but the StreamBase has been broadly focused on Streaming Analytics and assist in extraction of data flow pattern in Real-Time. Since the same thing can also be achieved with BE. Therefore, at a high level, both are somehow is majorly about the Processing of the Event.

Hence arises the question, "Then now, Why do we have two separate TIBCO Products to achieve the same thing ?" !. To begin answering this question, let me tell you one thing for sure that is these products are not just limited to Streaming Analytics and Event Processing. As explained by Mark Palmer, former CEO of StreamBase Systems at TIBCO Community forum, StreamBase has been at the sweet spot when it comes to CEP. Because, on the one side we have TIBCO BusinessEvents being an event-driven rules architecture that also has a tightly integrated data grid (ActiveSpaces) inside which makes it great for highly distributed, stateful event processing, while one the other hand, we have StreamBase, which flawlessly performs real-time analytics against streams of data that require aggregation, correlation, and time-based analysis and also it has an amazing visual development experience that makes it easy to build applications that deal with streaming events.

Apart from the differences in the product architecture, perspective and approach towards solving CEP, there is another space where these can be differentiated, Use Cases. To understand this better, Mark explains, BusinessEvents is more suitable for “Situation Awareness”, “Sense and Respond,” or “Track and Trace” Situations while StreamBase is best suited for "Algorithmic Trading", "Sensor Data Analytics", "Sentimental Analytics", "Fraud Detection" and "Monitoring". Let us take a detailed example to better understand these, suppose you are dealing with a state transition diagram type of life cycle for real-world entities then BE is the most natural tool. For example, Airline Baggage goes through a life cycle involving states like checked-in by the customer, loaded on the flight, delivered to the correct destination, delivered to the incorrect destination, collected by the customer, delivered to the customer at home, etc. If the data looks "analog" on the other hand, and if patterns need to be found in it without a fully pre-determined idea of what they are, SB is the most natural, despite the technically digital nature of the data. Examples: financial prices, machine sensor readings, accelerometer readings.

Another way to think and understand the difference is what integrated technologies both the products have. BusinessEvents come with plugins to extend the capability of the core engine for example Plugin for Event Stream Processing and Views. ActiveSpaces being a tightly couple integrated DataGrid for the BE Solution that provides Effective Caching in the real-time. On the other hand, StreamBase has a well interactive and integrated suite that has StreamBase LiveView Data Mart which is the industry's first Live Datamart as it provides the only end-user continues query model in the industry. Using LiveView Datamart, we can query streams, and the LiveView Datamart answers the query with a snapshot of real-time data, then continuously pushes results to the client. The server remembers the query and answers it continuously, tick-by-tick. In addition, LiveView has a great desktop environment for end-users, and a full complement of APIs for live HTML5 dashboards, .NET, Java, and even a front end from Excel that's live and continuously updating.

Please leave the comments below if it helps or if there is any question. I would be happy to help you all.
Thank You Guys, See you later. Till then, Good Luck. and Have a great CEP Exploration.

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- Vijay Prakash Tiwari

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