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Event Specification

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

Composite event query; Event declaration; Event definition

Definition

Event specifications define event types in terms of patterns of other event types by using event operators (either expressed as operators in an operator grammar or as functions in a functional grammar) and event contexts. Event types are categorized as atomic (or primitive) or composite. An atomic event type is either a system primitive (e.g., begin transaction) or it can be any defined atomic change in an activity such as a method, procedure, task, etc. (e.g., method has been called). Event types defined in terms of other event types are named composite event types.

Historical Background

Essentially, whenever something has to be defined, it is necessary to have a specification. This can be found in several disciplines of computer science, for example, programming languages, compiler technology, etc.

Event specifications became significant with the advent of the HiPAC project [1], in which seminal work on...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Skövde, The Informatics Research Centre, Skövde, Sweden

    Jonas Mellin & Mikael Berndtsson

  2. University of Skövde, School of Informatics, Skövde, Sweden

    Jonas Mellin & Mikael Berndtsson

Authors
  1. Jonas Mellin
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  2. Mikael Berndtsson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonas Mellin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

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Mellin, J., Berndtsson, M. (2018). Event Specification. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_505

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