Event Processing Technical Society - Use Cases

I’ve recently scanned the EP-TS use cases to see how
they might be applicable to SAF (per suggestion from Brian Connell at West
Global).  Before I respond to Brian, could everyone take a quick look at
my summaries and offer any feedback.

 

Use Case 1: Fraud Mgmt in Retail

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Summary: Detect theft in retail environment, e.g.
returning items that weren’t purchased.

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Current solutions: Surveillance, RFID, etc. 
Largely ineffective due to isolated systems and historical nature.

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Sources of Symptoms: Sales data, Customer data,
Security data

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SAF applicability: Seems that every retailer has a
proprietary system to thwart fraud.  Most of these systems rely on some
decision/action logic which could be codified into a SAF catalog for the
benefit of all retailers.

 

Use Case 2: Activity Monitoring (West Global’s use
case)

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Summary: A retailer tracks activities for a particular
merchandise:  pre-pay sales and post-pay sales, as either a new sale or an
upgrade.  Event system tracks “actual vs expected” and alerts
when there is a discrepancy.

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Current solutions: West Global’s own Business
Activity suite (along with many many competitors).

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Sources of Symptoms: The discrepancy alerts.

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SAF applicability: This use case doesn’t really
traverse boundaries.  The SAF use case starts where this use case leaves
off… when the discrepancy alert is generated (as a SAF symptom).  For
example, an unexpected decline in upgrades coupled with an increase in customer
help desk incidents might trigger some action??

 

Use Case 3: First responders (Oracle)

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Summary: Accident occurs.  Call to 911
automatically dispatches closest police, paramedics, tow truck.  Highway
traffic signs are automatically updated to warn of accident.

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Current solutions: Proprietary 911 systems

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Sources of Symptoms: 911 incident, policy/paramedic/two
truck status.

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SAF applicability: This is similar to the Fast Flowers
Delivery use case.  Oracle talks about a ‘registry’ that
matches publishers to consumers, kind of a ‘plug n play’
effect.  The SAF catalog acts as that ‘registry’, bridging
cross-domain symptoms to a well-known set of actions (ie: dispatch police,
etc).

 

Use Case 4: Facility Safety (IBM)

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Summary: Track every person in a facility via RFID for
purposes of security and safety.

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Current Solutions: Proprietary RFID tracking software.

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Sources of Symptoms: RFID chips/scanners

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SAF applicability: The IBM use case talks about
recognizing well-known patterns such as: visitor too far away from escort;
person in restricted area; and so forth.  Again, these are patterns that
could be codified in a SAF catalog and re-used.