Looking for an interesting way to learn more about event stream processing? Could you use a laugh after a long day of trying to get something done between meetings and email? Then, you should check out StreamBase’s Da Vinci Coder Contest, and the related short film, a parody on the Da Vinci Code.
The first part of the contest is a series of weekly "Jousts". To complete each joust, you need to discover secrets within StreamBase developer edition, the video, or "other" (easy to find) resources. This week is joust #2. Each weekly joust awards a prize ($1,000 range). If you’re so inclined, you can choose a charitable donation.
The second part of the contest, starting August 14, is the "Grand Tournament". This is a StreamBase application coding contest to win the coveted (?) title of "Da Vinci Coder" and a bigger prize ($10,000 range).
StreamBase, if you don’t know, is Mike Stonebraker’s latest company. No surprise, StreamBase takes a database approach to the event/information stream processing problem. StreamBase uses an SQL derivative (StreamSQL) to perform in-stream complex event processing. The StreamBase product is based on Mike Stonebraker’s Aurora project.
I had a chance to meet with the StreamBase team earlier this year, and was definitely impressed. This paper does a good job explaining the requirements for an event stream processing engine.