Glossary According to Lexicographic Order (definitions only)

Cause: An event A is a cause of another event B if A had to happen in order for B to happen.

Clock: A process that creates an ordered ascending sequence of values of type Time with a uniform interval between them.

Complex event: An event that summarizes, represents, or denotes a set of other events.

Complex event processing (CEP): Computing that performs operations on complex events, including reading, creating, transforming, abstracting, or discarding them.

Composite event: A derived event that is created by combining a set of other simple or complex events (known as its members)—using a specific set of event constructors, such as disjunction, conjunction, and sequence. A composite event always includes the member (base) events from which it is derived.

Constraint (event pattern constraint): A Boolean condition that must be satisfied by the events observed in a system.

Derived event (synthesized event, synthetic event): An event that is generated as a result of applying a method or process to one or more other events.

Event: Anything that happens or is contemplated as happening.

Event (event object, event message, event tuple): An object that represents encodes or records an event, generally for the purpose of computer processing.

Event abstraction: The relationship between a complex event and the other events that it denotes, summarizes, or otherwise represents.

Event attribute (event property): A component of the structure of an event.

Event channel: Any means of conveying event objects.

Event cloud: A partially ordered set of events (poset), either bounded or unbounded.

Event consumer (event sink): An event processing agent that receives events.

Event driven: The behavior of a device, software module, or other entity whose execution is in response to the arrival of events from external or internal sources.

Event driven architecture (EDA): An architectural style in which components are event-driven and communicate by means of events.

Event hierarchy: A model that represents the relationships between events that are at different levels of abstraction with respect to each other.

Event management: An IT discipline that encompasses event governance, event policy management, and the design, development, testing, deployment, maintenance, and administration of events, event models, event metadata, and related aspects of systems that process events.

Event pattern: A template containing event templates, relational operators, and variables. An event pattern can match sets of related events by replacing variables with values.

Event pattern detection: Finding instances of an event pattern.

Event pattern discovery: Finding new event patterns.

Event pattern–triggered reactive rule: A rule that prescribes actions to be taken whenever an instance of a given event pattern is detected.

Event processing: Computing that performs operations on events, including reading, creating, transforming, or discarding events.

Event processing agent (EPA) (event processing component, event mediator): A software module that processes events.

Event processing language (EPL): A high-level computer language for defining the behavior of event processing agents.

Event processing network (EPN): A set of event processing agents (EPAs) and a set of event channels connecting them.

Event producer (event source, event emitter): An event processing agent that sends events.

Event stream: A linearly ordered sequence of events.

Event stream processing (ESP): Computing on inputs that are event streams.

Event template: An event form or descriptor, some of whose parameters are variables. An event template matches single events by replacing the variables with values.

Event timing: The time value attributes of an event.

Event type (event class, event definition, or event schema): A class of event objects.

Instantaneous event: An event that happens at a point in time.

Pattern instance (event pattern instance): A set of related events resulting from an event pattern by replacing the variables by values.

Publish-and-subscribe (pub-sub): A method of communication in which messages are delivered according to subscriptions.

Publisher: An agent that sends events that are disseminated by a publish-and-subscribe protocol.

Raw event: An event object that records a real-world event.

Relationships between events: Events are related by time, causality, abstraction, and other relationships. Time and causality impose partial orderings upon events.

Rule (in event processing): A prescribed method for processing events.

Simple event: An event that is not viewed as summarizing, representing, or denoting a set of other events.

Subscriber: An agent that submits a subscription for publish-and-subscribe communication.

Time interval: A period of time bounded by two timing attributes, called the interval’s start time and end time.

Timestamp: A time value attribute of an event recording the reading of a clock in the system in which the event was created or observed.

Virtual event: An event that does not happen in the physical world but is imagined, modeled, or simulated.

Window (in event processing): A bounded segment of an event stream.