Acknowledgments

As it is the case with any large project, success is largely based upon the collective work of numerous people.

I would like to thank Manning for the opportunity—in particular Michael Stephens, my acquisitions editor, and the production team of Maureen Spencer, Karen Tegtmeyer, Mary Piergies, Linda Recktenwald, Andy Carroll, and my technical proofreader Ivan Kirkpatrick, who went over and beyond the call of duty in checking the code and providing many helpful suggestions for improving the manuscript. I would also like to express special thanks to my development editor Sebastian Stirling, for his excellent insight and feedback on my day-to-day work.

I would like to thank the following reviewers for reading the manuscript at various stages during its development and for providing invaluable feedback: Norman Richards, Adam Taft, Mykel Alvis, Mike Keith, Chad Wilson, Peter Kriens, Richard S. Hall, Rick Wagner, Pratik Patel, Jeff Davis, Mirko Jahn, Sivakumar Thyagarajan, Dru Sellers, Frank Kieviet, Gabor Paller, Jeremy Flowers, Denys Kurylenko, Steve Gutz, Janardhanan Vembunarayana, and Benjamin Muschko.

I would like to thank David Bosschaert of Red Hat for reviewing the final manuscript and writing an insightful foreword to my book.

I would like to thank the Oracle CEP team, for giving me the experience needed to write this book.

I would like to thank my father, Duarte, and my mother, Ana, for giving me the support I needed to continue my work regardless of all the other problems that life throws at you. Also, I would like to thank my brother, Rodrigo, for always being helpful, and my sister, Larissa, for being the enthusiastic and loving person she is.

I would like to thank my sons, Gabriel and Lucas, for providing fun-filled book-writing breaks, and understanding when I was in the book-writing no-breaks mode (as they saw it).

Finally, I would like to thank Juliana, my wife-to-be, for her unyielding support, her caring, and for her lifelong understanding. For you, it’s all worth it! Words put into a book last forever, and so will our love.