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Definition of “Event” for Event Processing

I collected some definitions of event from the view of event processing research and practise. The emphasis is mine:

  • (Etzion & Niblett 2010)1 wrote:

    An event is an occurrence within a particular system or domain; it is something that has happened, or is contemplated as having happened in that domain. The word event is also used to mean a programming entity that represents such an occurrence in a computing system.

  • (Luckham & Schulte 2011)2 wrote:

    Anything that happens, or is contemplated as happening. Or: An object that represents, encodes, or records an event, generally for the purpose of computer processing.

  • (Gupta and Jain 2011)3 wrote:

    Events are first-class objects which means a fundamental information unit which can be stored, queried and merged with other events

  • (Hinze & Voisard 2002)4 wrote:

    An event is the occurrence of a state transition at a certain point in time.

  • (Michelson 2006)5 wrote:

    A notable thing that happens inside or outside your business.

  • (Mühl et al. 2006)6 wrote:

    Any happening of interest that can be observed from within a computer is considered an event. […] A notification is a datum that reifies an event, i.e., it contains data describing the event.


  1. Etzion, O. & Niblett, P. Event Processing in Action Manning Publications Co., 2010 
  2. Luckham, D. C. & Schulte, R. Event Processing Glossary – Version 2.0, 2011 Link 
  3. Gupta, A. & Jain, R. Managing Event Information: Modeling, Retrieval, and Applications, Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2011 
  4. Hinze, A. & Voisard, A. A parameterized algebra for event notification services Ninth International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning, 2002. TIME 2002, 2002 
  5. Michelson, B. M. Event-Driven Architecture Overview Patricia Seybold Group, Feb, 2006 Link 
  6. Mühl, G.; Fiege, L. & Pietzuch, P. Distributed Event-Based Systems Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 2006