Design Patterns for Event-driven Enterprise Architectures

In recent years, event processing has gained considerable attention as an individual discipline in computer science. For event processing, generally accepted software architectures based on proven design patterns and principles are missing. In this paper, we introduce a catalogue of design patterns that supports the development of event-driven enterprise architectures and complex event processing systems. The design principles originate from experiences reported in publications as well as from our own experiences in building event processing systems with industrial and academic partners. We present several patterns on different layers of abstractions that define the overall structure as well as the building blocks for event processing systems. Finally, we discuss a general reference architecture for event-driven enterprise systems.