Using EPL Studio
EPL Studio is a graphical development environment to help you write EPL scripts. It is not essential for writing EPL, however it can be most helpful for beginning EPL programmers with its easy-to-use GUI. It also helps you to organize streams and event definitions. It comes equipped with help available for all keywords. Figure 3 shows the interface for EPL Studio.

Figure 3. The Interface for EPL Studio

Using the Event Processor Console
The Event Processor Console provides a Web GUI for administering the running server. Through the Console, you can examine and alter stream definitions. You also can monitor data in streams, start and stop the server, and perform all basic operation, administration and maintenance functions.

Using the Event Processor SDK
The Event Processor SDK provides a well-documented API. The Event Processor API provides developer documentation for the engine, event definitions, templates, streams and data providers.

The EPL+ command line interface, which is similar to SQL, also is part of the SDK. It allows you to use the CONNECTION command to Connect, Disconnect, Quit; the SHOW command for Event Definitions, Streams, Templates and the like; the DESCRIBE command for Event Definitions, Templates and Views; the DUMP command for Stream and Named View. The EPL+ can be called from a script, provides for a simple and basic interface and can be used remotely.

The SDK also provides the I/O Adapter Development Kit. You can develop new adapters by extending the base classes StreamProvider and StreamListener. The SDK provides several example implementations in Java Source Code to help you develop adapters. Further, custom Data Providers can also be written to access different types of data sources.

The EPL Extensions Development Kit also is part of the SDK. It provides functions that are similar to static Java functions and can be built to extend the language's capability. Views are classes that perform complex computation on data structures and data streams. The Function Providers are classes that provide methods to access a persistent object. They are similar to Data Providers but are expressed as functions, rather than as adapters. The EPL Extensions Development Kit includes documentation and example code to aid you in developing new Views, Function Providers and Data Providers.

Finally, the Event Processor SDK includes the Dashboard Development Kit. This skeletal dashboard displays streams and events. The Dashboard Development Kit includes two types of examples in the source code to help you develop the end-user GUI. The first example, called Webapp, is a simple Web-based GUI for event processing. The second example, the Event Manager, is a more sophisticated, tabs-based Web GUI for developing advanced dashboards.

Using Event Processor Adapters
You can adapt real-world streams into a form usable by Event Processor Server using the Event Processor Input/Output Adapters. As previously mentioned, the I/O Adapters connect a stream to the outside world, push events to a stream and send events from a stream. The adapters run in the Event Processor Server, and attach to streams. The adapters have input and output channels to the server for different protocols. Built-in adapters include Java Messaging Service (JMS); IBM WebSphere MQ; Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP); Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which includes eXtensible Markup Language (XML); comma-separated value (CSV) files and Avaya CPM Web service.

The various components of the Avaya Event Processor work in unison to provide an easy-to-use development environment in which events invoke services and services act as event generators. The Avaya approach to event processing using EPL closely mirrors the structure of SQL statements. As such, any developer familiar with the long tested database query language should find development with the Avaya Event Processor quick and easy for creating applications that rapidly respond to events.

More Resources