EVENT STREAM CONDITIONING

• US 20080072221A1
• Filed: 09/05/2006
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/05/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Barga, Roger S., Chkodrov, Gueorgui B.
• Granted Patent: US 8,099,452 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/12 Synchronisation of different clock signals provided by a plurality of clock generators
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/544 Remote
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/52 Program synchronisation; Mutual exclusion, e.g. by means of semaphores
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/542 Event management; Broadcasting; Multicasting; Notifications

Abstract

A distributed event processing system that can organize (e.g., order) input streams regardless of actual time of receipt is provided. This order may simply be arrival order or given explicitly on a specific event attribute, such as a timestamp or sequence number. Traditional standing event queries, such as a temporal correlation of events across multiple streams, often block if an input stream is slow or may produce an incorrect answer if events fail to arrive within the fixed time interval. In response to this situation, the subject innovation employs punctuation and heartbeats in connection with a robust and scalable event processing system. The innovation discloses mechanisms by which heartbeats and timestamps can be regularly generated by low-level nodes (e.g., sources) and propagated through the network, to unblock standing event pattern queries and align events from multiple distributed streams.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates event stream management, comprising:

an interface component that receives physical clock information from a plurality of sources; and

an event stream conditioning component that establishes a logical clock component based upon the physical clock information.

2. The system of claim 1, the each of the plurality of sources comprises a physical clock component that provides a portion of the physical clock information.

3. The system of claim 1, the event stream conditioning component includes a clock alignment component that analyzes the physical clock information and establishes the logical clock component as a function of the physical clock information.

4. The system of claim 1, the event stream conditioning component includes a stream processing component that arranges a plurality of event streams received from a subset of the sources based at least in part upon the logical clock component.

5. The system of claim 4, the event stream conditioning component includes a stream interleave operator component that facilitates buffering and time alignment of the received event streams.

6. The system of claim 4, the interface component receives the plurality of streams from the subset of sources.

7. The system of claim 4, the interface component queries the subset of sources for the plurality of streams.

8. The system of claim 4, further comprising a stream analyzer component that evaluates a punctuation indicator associated with each of the received streams, the punctuation indicator facilitates arrangement of the streams.

9. The system of claim 8, further comprising an ordering component that arranges the streams based at least in part upon the punctuation indicator associated with each of the event streams.

10. The system of claim 8, further comprising a buffer component that queues each of the event streams until a time-aligned stream is received with a punctuation that matches a predetermined output bookmark.

11. The system of claim 4, the plurality of event streams relate to a security system.

12. The system of claim 4, the plurality of event streams relate to a financial business system.

13. The system of claim 1, further comprising an artificial intelligence (AI) component that employs at least one of a probabilistic and a statistical-based analysis that infers an action that a user desires to be automatically performed.

14. A computer-implemented method of conditioning event streams, comprising:

obtaining a plurality of event streams from a plurality of sources; and

time aligning the event streams based at least in part upon a virtual clock.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 14, further comprising establishing the virtual clock based at least in part upon a physical clock of each of the sources.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, further comprising pinging each of the sources for a value of an associated physical clock, the value of each physical clock is used to establish the virtual clock.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 14, further comprising:

buffering a subset of the event streams; and

releasing an event stream to the output based at least in part upon a punctuation as compared to an output bookmark.

18. A computer-executable system that facilitates organization of event streams, comprising:

computer-implemented means for buffering a plurality of event streams received from a plurality of disparate sources;

computer-implemented means for analyzing punctuation indicators related to each of the event streams as a function of a logical clock; and

computer-implemented means for passing a subset of the streams to an output based at least in part upon the punctuation indicators.

19. The computer-executable system of claim 18, further comprising applying the punctuation indicators to each of the event streams.

20. The computer-executable system of claim 19, further comprising establishing the logical clock based at least in part upon a physical clock related to each of the sources.