We live in a fast-paced world where we depend on speedy actions and timely responses.

Whether that is a quick answer to a text message or getting our order in under three minutes when waiting at the drive-thru, our time is precious.

To keep up with the highly competitive market and need for instant responses, you have to expand the capabilities of the data processing tools you use to ensure you have top-notch data from business analytics. While these tools are where questions are asked, schemas are designed, and reports are delivered, sometimes you need something that takes it up a notch.

That's where complex event processing (CEP) comes into play.

An example of CEP finding patterns in events would be when a payment platform, that receives thousands of payment events a minute, tries to uncover fraudulent payments from patterns of purchases.

Complex event processing can also be referred to as event, stream, or event stream processing. And as the name suggests, it can be very... complex, no matter what you refer to it as. There's a lot to unravel, so let's get started.