Event-Driven Architecture: How SOA Enables the Real-Time Enterprise

I'm reading Event-Driven Architecture: How SOA Enables the Real-Time Enterprise, Here are some good insights:

Simple examples of an event-driven system

• Thermostat turns the heat on or off based on its programmed reaction to an event (change in temperature)
• Web: The event of requesting URL triggers the action that results in displaying HTML content in your browser window

"An EDA consists of applications that are programmed to publish, subscribe, or take other actions upon events triggered by applications with which they share no formal coupling. For this reason, EDA has been likened to a “nervous system” for the enterprise."

The book has great insight into EDA Then, Now, and in the Future

• Older EDAs are reliant on explicit or nearly explicit designs
• Complex event processing (CEP), married with implicit capabilities, is really what most people mean when they talk about modern or futuristic EDAs

"When you hear someone talk about how, for example, the Department of Homeland Security should be able to instantly know that John Smith, who has bought a one-way ticket for cash, has a fingerprint that matches that of a known criminal based on records kept in Scotland Yard—we are talking about an implicit CEP EDA."

Interoperability is when you want information or procedures from one group to be available with another. It’s two or more systems performing an operation together.
Great simple example:

"If you and a friend pick up a heavy box together, you are interoperating. Both of your efforts are needed to lift the box. The reason we go over this seemingly obvious explanation is because interoperation in IT is often confused with integration."

Interoperability—the sum total of software and hardware that enables applications, systems, machines, and networks to connect with one another and communicate productively—is either an inhibitor or enabler of EDA. Without simple, cost-effective interoperability, there simply cannot be any EDA. Or, at least, there cannot be the kind of dynamic, implicit, complex EDA that we want now and in the future.