Time-based windows as well as pattern observers and guards take a time period as a parameter. Time periods follow the syntax below.

time-period : [day-part] [hour-part] [minute-part] [seconds-part] [milliseconds-part]

day-part : (number|variable_name) ("days" | "day")
hour-part : (number|variable_name) ("hours" | "hour")
minute-part : (number|variable_name) ("minutes" | "minute" | "min")
seconds-part : (number|variable_name) ("seconds" | "second" | "sec")
milliseconds-part : (number|variable_name) ("milliseconds" | "millisecond" | "msec")

Some examples of time periods are:

10 seconds
10 minutes 30 seconds
20 sec 100 msec
1 day 2 hours 20 minutes 15 seconds 110 milliseconds
0.5 minutes

Variable names and substitution parameters '?' for prepared statements are also allowed as part of a time period expression.

Comments can appear anywhere in the EPL or pattern statement text where whitespace is allowed. Comments can be written in two ways: slash-slash (// ...) comments and slash-star (/* ... */) comments.

Slash-slash comments extend to the end of the line:

// This comment extends to the end of the line.
// Two forward slashes with no whitespace between them begin such comments.

select * from MyEvent  // this is a slash-slash comment

// All of this text together is a valid statement.

Slash-star comments can span multiple lines:

/* This comment is a "slash-star" comment that spans multiple lines.
 * It begins with the slash-star sequence with no space between the '/' and '*' characters.
 * By convention, subsequent lines can begin with a star and are aligned, but this is 
 * not required.
 */		
select * from MyEvent  /* this also works */

Comments styles can also be mixed:

select field1, // first comment
  /* second comment*/  field2
  from MyEvent

Certain words such as select, delete or set are reserved and may not be used as identifiers. Please consult Appendix B, Reserved Keywords for the list of reserved keywords and permitted keywords.

Names of built-in functions and certain auxiliary keywords are permitted as event property names and in the rename syntax of the select clause. For example, count is acceptable.

Consider the example below, which assumes that 'last' is an event property of MyEvent:

// valid
select last, count(*) as count from MyEvent

This example shows an incorrect use of a reserved keyword:

// invalid
select insert from MyEvent

EPL offers an escape syntax for reserved keywords: Event properties as well as event or stream names may be escaped via the backwards apostrophe ` (ASCII 96) character.

The next example queries an event type by name Order (a reserved keyword) that provides a property by name insert (a reserved keyword):

// valid
select `insert` from `Order`

EPL honors all Java built-in primitive and boxed types, including java.math.BigInteger and java.math.BigDecimal.

EPL also follows Java standards in terms of widening, performing widening automatically in cases where widening type conversion is allowed without loss of precision, for both boxed and primitive types and including BigInteger and BigDecimal:

In cases where loss of precision is possible because of narrowing requirements, EPL compilation outputs a compilation error.

EPL supports casting via the cast function.

EPL returns double-type values for division regardless of operand type. EPL can also be configured to follow Java rules for integer arithmetic instead as described in Section 10.4.18, “Engine Settings related to Expression Evaluation”.

Division by zero returns positive or negative infinity. Division by zero can be configured to return null instead.

select 'volume' as field1,
   "sleep" as field2, 
  "\u0041" as unicodeA

select true as field1, 
  false as field2

select 1 as field1, 
  -1 as field2, 
  1e2 as field3

select 1L as field1, 
  1l as field2

select 1.67 as field1, 
  167e-2 as field2, 
  1.67d as field3

select 1.2f as field1, 
  1.2F as field2

select 0x10 as field1

An annotation is an addition made to information in a statement. Esper provides certain built-in annotations for defining statement name, adding a statement description or for tagging statements such as for managing statements or directing statement output. Other then the built-in annotations, applications can provide their own annotation classes that the EPL compiler can populate.

An annotation is part of the statement text and precedes the EPL select or pattern statement. Annotations are therefore part of the EPL grammar. The syntax for annotations follows the host language (Java, .NET) annotation syntax:

@annotation_name [(annotation_parameters)]

An annotation consists of the annotation name and optional annotation parameters. The annotation_name is the simple class name or fully-qualified class name of the annotation class. The optional annotation_parameters are a list of key-value pairs following the syntax:

@annotation_name (attribute_name = attribute_value, [name=value, ...])

The attribute_name is an identifier that must match the attributes defined by the annotation class. An attribute_value is a constant of any of the primitive types or string, an array, an enumeration value or another (nested) annotation. Null values are not allowed as annotation attribute values. Enumeration values are supported in EPL statements and not support in statements created via the createPattern method.

Use the getAnnotations method of EPStatement to obtain annotations provided via statement text.

public @interface ProcessMonitor {
  String processName();
  boolean isLongRunning default false;
  int[] subProcessIds;
}

@ProcessMonitor(processName='CreditApproval',
  isLongRunning=true, subProcessIds = {1, 2, 3} )
  
select count(*) from ProcessEvent(processId in (1, 2, 3).win:time(30)

epService.getEPAdministrator().getConfiguration().addImport("com.mycompany.myannotations.*");

@Name("MyStatementName")

@Description("A statement description 
is placed here.")

@Tag(name="MyTagName", 
 value="MyTagValue")

@Priority(10)

@Drop

@Name("RevenuePerCustomer")
@Description("Outputs revenue per customer considering all events encountered so far.")
@Tag(name="grouping", value="customer")

select customerId, sum(revenue) from CustomerRevenueEvent

@Name("SecurityFilter1") select * from SecurityFilter(ip="127.0.0.1")

@Description('This statement filters localhost.') select * from SecurityFilter(ip="127.0.0.1")

@Tag(name='ip_sensitive', value='Y') 
@Tag(name='author', value='Jim')
select * from SecurityFilter(ip="127.0.0.1")

@Priority(10) select * from SecurityFilter(ip="127.0.0.1")

@Drop select * from SecurityFilter(ip="127.0.0.1")

The syntax for selecting all event properties in a stream is:

select * from stream_def

The following statement selects StockTick events for the last 30 seconds of IBM stock ticks.

select * from StockTick(symbol='IBM').win:time(30 sec)

The * wildcard and expressions can also be combined in a select clause. The combination selects all event properties and in addition the computed values as specified by any additional expressions that are part of the select clause. Here is an example that selects all properties of stock tick events plus a computed product of price and volume that the statement names 'pricevolume':

select *, price * volume as pricevolume from StockTick(symbol='IBM')

When using wildcard (*), Esper does not actually copy your event properties out of your event or events. It simply wraps your native type in an EventBean interface. Your application has access to the underlying event object through the getUnderlying method and has access to the property values through the get method.

In a join statement, using the select * syntax selects one event property per stream to hold the event for that stream. The property name is the stream name in the from clause.

To choose the particular event properties to return:

select event_property [, event_property] [, ...] from stream_def

The following statement simply selects the symbol and price properties of stock ticks, and the total volume for stock tick events in a 60-second time window.

select symbol, price, sum(volume) from StockTick(symbol='IBM').win:time(60 sec)

The following statement declares a further view onto the event stream of stock ticks: the univariate statistics view (stat:uni). The statement selects the properties that this view derives from the stream, for the last 100 events of IBM stock ticks in the length window.

select datapoints, total, average, variance, stdev, stdevpa 
from StockTick(symbol='IBM').win:length(100).stat:uni(volume)

The select clause can contain one or more expressions.

select expression [, expression] [, ...] from stream_def

The following statement selects the volume multiplied by price for a time batch of the last 30 seconds of stock tick events.

select volume * price from StockTick.win:time_batch(30 sec)

Event properties and expressions can be renamed using below syntax.

select [event_property | expression] as identifier [, ...]

The following statement selects volume multiplied by price and specifies the name volPrice for the resulting column.

select volume * price as volPrice from StockTick.win:length(100)

Identifiers cannot contain the "." (dot) character, i.e. "vol.price" is not a valid identifier for the rename syntax.

If your statement is joining multiple streams, your may specify property names that are unique among the joined streams, or use wildcard (*) as explained earlier.

In case the property name in your select or other clauses is not unique considering all joined streams, you will need to use the name of the stream as a prefix to the property.

This example is a join between the two streams StockTick and News, respectively named as 'tick' and 'news'. The example selects from the StockTick event the symbol value using the 'tick' stream name as a prefix:

select tick.symbol from StockTick.win:time(10) as tick, News.win:time(10) as news

Use the wildcard (*) selector in a join to generate a property for each stream, with the property value being the event itself. The output events of the statement below have two properties: the 'tick' property holds the StockTick event and the 'news' property holds the News event:

select * from StockTick.win:time(10) as tick, News.win:time(10) as news

The following syntax can also be used to specify what stream's properties to select:

select stream_name.* [as name] from ...

The selection of tick.* selects the StockTick stream events only:

select tick.* from StockTick.win:time(10) as tick, News.win:time(10) as news
where tick.symbol = news.symbol

The next example uses the as keyword to name each stream's joined events. This instructs the engine to create a property for each named event:

select tick.* as stocktick, news.* as news 
from StockTick.win:time(10) as tick, News.win:time(10) as news
where stock.symbol = news.symbol

The output events of the above example have two properties 'stocktick' and 'news' that are the StockTick and News events.

The stream name itself, as further described in Section 4.4.5, “Using the Stream Name”, may be used within expressions or alone.

This example passes events to a user-defined function named compute and also shows insert-into to populate an event stream of combined events:

insert into TickNewStream select tick, news, MyLib.compute(news, tick) as result
from StockTick.win:time(10) as tick, News.win:time(10) as news
where tick.symbol = news.symbol

// second statement that uses the TickNewStream stream
select tick.price, news.text, result from TickNewStream

In summary, the stream_name.* streamname wildcard syntax can be used to select a stream as the underlying event or as a property, but cannot appear within an expression. While the stream_name syntax (without wildcard) always selects a property (and not as an underlying event), and can occur anywhere within an expression.

If your statement employs pattern expressions, then your pattern expression tags events with a tag name. Each tag name becomes available for use as a property in the select clause and all other clauses.

For example, here is a very simple pattern that matches on every StockTick event received within 30 seconds after start of the statement. The sample selects the symbol and price properties of the matching events:

select tick.symbol as symbol, tick.price as price
from pattern[every tick=StockTick where timer:within(10 sec)]

The use of the wildcard selector, as shown in the next statement, creates a property for each tagged event in the output. The next statement outputs events that hold a single 'tick' property whose value is the event itself:

select * from pattern[every tick=StockTick where timer:within(10 sec)]

You may also select the matching event itself using the tick.* syntax. The engine outputs the StockTick event itself to listeners:

select tick.* from pattern[every tick=StockTick where timer:within(10 sec)]

A tag name as specified in a pattern is a valid expression itself. This example uses the insert into clause to make available the events matched by a pattern to further statements:

// make a new stream of ticks and news available
insert into StockTickAndNews 
select tick, news from pattern [every tick=StockTick -> news=News(symbol=tick.symbol)]
      
// second statement to select from the stream of ticks and news
select tick.symbol, tick.price, news.text from StockTickAndNews

The optional istream, irstream and rstream keywords in the select clause control the event streams posted to listeners and observers to a statement.

If neither keyword is specified, and in the default engine configuration, the engine posts only insert stream events via the newEvents parameter to the update method of UpdateListener instances listening to the statement. The engine does not post remove stream events, by default.

The insert stream consists of the events entering the respective window(s) or stream(s) or aggregations, while the remove stream consists of the events leaving the respective window(s) or the changed aggregation result. See Chapter 3, Processing Model for more information on insert and remove streams.

The engine posts remove stream events to the oldEvents parameter of the update method only if either the irstream or the rstream keyword occurs in the select clause. This behavior can be changed via engine-wide configuration as described in Section 10.4.14, “Engine Settings related to Stream Selection”.

By specifying the istream keyword you can instruct the engine to only post insert stream events via the newEvents parameter to the update method on listeners. The engine will then not post any remove stream events, and the oldEvents parameter is always a null value.

By specifying the irstream keyword you can instruct the engine to post both insert stream and remove stream events.

By specifying the rstream keyword you can instruct the engine to only post remove stream events via the newEvents parameter to the update method on listeners. The engine will then not post any insert stream events, and the oldEvents parameter is also always a null value.

The following statement selects only the events that are leaving the 30 second time window.

select rstream * from StockTick.win:time(30 sec)

The istream and rstream keywords in the select clause are matched by same-name keywords available in the insert into clause. While the keywords in the select clause control the event stream posted to listeners to the statement, the same keywords in the insert into clause specify the event stream that the engine makes available to other statements.

Property or column names can optionally be qualified by a stream name and the provider URI. The syntax is:

[[provider_URI.]stream_name.]property_name

The provider_URI is the URI supplied to the EPServiceProviderManager class, or the string default for the default provider.

This example assumes the provider is the default provider:

select MyEvent.myProperty from MyEvent
// ... equivalent to ...
select default.MyEvent.myProperty from MyEvent

Stream names can also be qualified by the provider URI. The syntax is:

[provider_URI.]stream_name

The next example assumes a provider URI by name of Processor:

select Processor.MyEvent.myProperty from Processor.MyEvent

The stream_def syntax for a filter-based event stream is as below:

event_stream_name [(filter_criteria)] [contained_selection] [.view_spec] [.view_spec] [...]

The event_stream_name is either the name of an event type or name of an event stream populated by an insert into statement or the name of a named window.

The filter_criteria is optional and consists of a list of expressions filtering the events of the event stream, within parenthesis after the event stream name.

The contained_selection is optional and is for use with coarse-grained events that have properties that are themselves one or more events, see Section 4.20, “Contained-Event Selection” for the synopsis and examples.

The view_spec are optional view specifications, which are combinable definitions for retaining events and for deriving information from events.

The following EPL statement shows event type, filter criteria and views combined in one statement. It selects all event properties for the last 100 events of IBM stock ticks for volume. In the example, the event type is the fully qualified Java class name org.esper.example.StockTick. The expression filters for events where the property symbol has a value of "IBM". The optional view specifications for deriving data from the StockTick events are a length window and a view for computing statistics on volume. The name for the event stream is "volumeStats".

select * from 
  org.esper.example.StockTick(symbol='IBM').win:length(100).stat:uni(volume) as volumeStats

Esper filters out events in an event stream as defined by filter criteria before it sends events to subsequent views. Thus, compared to search conditions in a where clause, filter criteria remove unneeded events early. In the above example, events with a symbol other then IBM do not enter the time window.

select * from com.mypackage.myevents.RfidEvent

select * from RfidEvent

select * from org.myorg.rfid.IRfidReadable

select * from RfidEvent(category="Perishable")

select * from com.mycompany.RfidEvent(MyRFIDLib.isInRange(x, y) or (x < 0 and y < 0))

select * from RfidEvent(zone=1, category=10)
...is equivalent to...
select * from RfidEvent(zone=1 and category=10)

mypackage.RfidEvent(x in [100:200], y in [0:100])

mypackage.RfidEvent(x between 100 and 200, y between 0 and 50)

mypackage.RfidEvent(x not in [0:100])

mypackage.RfidEvent(x not between 0 and 100)

mypackage.RfidEvent(category in ('Perishable', 'Container'))

mypackage.RfidEvent(category not in ('Household', 'Electrical'))

Event pattern expressions can also be used to specify one or more event streams in an EPL statement. For pattern-based event streams, the event stream definition stream_def consists of the keyword pattern and a pattern expression in brackets []. The syntax for an event stream definition using a pattern expression is below. As in filter-based event streams, an optional list of views that derive data from the stream can be supplied.

pattern [pattern_expression] [.view_spec] [.view_spec] [...]

The next statement specifies an event stream that consists of both stock tick events and trade events. The example tags stock tick events with the name "tick" and trade events with the name "trade".

select * from pattern [every tick=StockTickEvent or every trade=TradeEvent]

This statement generates an event every time the engine receives either one of the event types. The generated events resemble a map with "tick" and "trade" keys. For stock tick events, the "tick" key value is the underlying stock tick event, and the "trade" key value is a null value. For trade events, the "trade" key value is the underlying trade event, and the "tick" key value is a null value.

Lets further refine this statement adding a view the gives us the last 30 seconds of either stock tick or trade events. Lets also select prices and a price total.

select tick.price as tickPrice, trade.price as tradePrice, 
       sum(tick.price) + sum(trade.price) as total
  from pattern [every tick=StockTickEvent or every trade=TradeEvent].win:time(30 sec)

Note that in the statement above tickPrice and tradePrice can each be null values depending on the event processed. Therefore, an aggregation function such as sum(tick.price + trade.price)) would always return null values as either of the two price properties are always a null value for any event matching the pattern. Use the coalesce function to handle null values, for example: sum(coalesce(tick.price, 0) + coalesce(trade.price, 0)).

Views are used to derive or aggregate data. Views can be staggered onto each other. See the section Chapter 8, EPL Reference: Views on the views available that also outlines the different types of views: Data Window views and Derived-Value views.

Views can optionally take one or more parameters. These parameters are expressions themselves that may consists of any combination of variables, arithmatics, user-define function or substituion parameters for prepared statements, as example.

The below example serves to show views and staggering of views. It uses a car location event that contains information about the location of a car on a highway.

select * from CarLocEvent.std:groupby(carId).win:length(4).
  std:groupby(expressway, direction, segment).std:size()

The first view std:groupby(carId) groups car location events by car id. The second view win:length(4) keeps a length window of the 4 last events, with one length window for each car id. The next view std:groupby(expressway, direction, segment) groups each event by its expressway, direction and segment property values. Again, the grouping is done for each car id considering the last 4 events only. The last view std:size() is used to report the number of events. Thus the below example reports the number of events per car id and per expressway, direction and segment considering the last 4 events for each car id only.

When views are staggered onto each other as a chain of views, then the insert and remove stream received by each view is the insert and remove stream made available by the view (or stream) earlier in the chain.

The special keep-all view keeps all events: It does not provide a remove stream, i.e. events are not removed from the keep-all view unless by means of the on-delete syntax or by revision events.

Data window views provide an expiry policy that indicates when to remove events from the data window, with the exception of the keep-all data window which has no expiry policy and the group-by view for allocating a new data window per group.

EPL allows the freedom to use multiple data window views onto a stream and thus combine expiry policies. Combining data windows into a intersection (the default) or a union can achieve a useful strategy for retaining events and expiring events that are no longer of interest. Named windows and the on-delete syntax provide an additional degree of freedom.

In order to combine two or more data window views there is no keyword required. The retain-intersection keyword is the default and the retain-union keyword may instead be provided for a stream.

The concept of union and intersection come from Set mathematics. In the language of Set mathematics, two sets A and B can be "added" together: The intersection of A and B is the set of all things which are members of both A and B, i.e. the members two sets have "in common". The union of A and B is the set of all things which are members of either A or B.

Use the retain-intersection (the default) keyword to retain an intersection of all events as defined by two or more data windows. All events removed from any of the intersected data windows are entered into the remove stream. This is the default behavior if neither retain keyword is specified.

Use the retain-union keyword to retain a union of all events as defined by two or more data windows. Only events removed from all data windows are entered into the remove stream.

As you can see, it is the remove stream that the combined multiple data windows provide which differs when retaining an intersection and retaining a union, the insert stream is the same to all data windows and their staggered views. Therefore, when coming batching data windows with further data windows, the insert stream still remains the insert stream of the set overall (not batched). Consider using output snapshot to obtain regular updates instead of combining batch and other data windows.

The next example statement totals the price of OrderEvent events in a union of the last 30 seconds and unique by product name:

select sum(price) from OrderEvent.win:time(30 sec).std:unique(productName) retain-union

In the above statement, all OrderEvent events that are either less then 30 seconds old or that are the last event for the product name are considered.

Here is an example statement totals the price of OrderEvent events in an intersection of the last 30 seconds and unique by product name:

select sum(price) from OrderEvent.win:time(30 sec).std:unique(productName) retain-intersection

In the above statement, only those OrderEvent events that are both less then 30 seconds old and are the last event for the product name are considered.

For advanced users and for backward compatibility, it is possible to configure Esper to allow multiple data window views without either of the retain keywords, as described in Section 10.4.11.2, “Configuring Multi-Expiry Policy Defaults”.

Your from clause may assign a name to each stream. This assigned stream name can serve any of the following purposes.

First, the stream name can be used to disambiguate property names. The stream_name.property_name syntax uniquely identifies which property to select if property names overlap between streams. Here is an example:

select prod.productId, ord.productId from ProductEvent as prod, OrderEvent as ord

Second, the stream name can be used with a wildcard (*) character to select events in a join, or assign new names to the streams in a join:

// Select ProductEvent only
select prod.* from ProductEvent as prod, OrderEvent

// Assign column names 'product' and 'order' to each event
select prod.* as product, ord.* as order from ProductEvent as prod, OrderEvent as ord

Further, the stream name by itself can occur in any expression: The engine passes the event itself to that expression. For example, the engine passes the ProductEvent and the OrderEvent to the user-defined function 'checkOrder':

select prod.productId, MyFunc.checkOrder(prod, ord) 
from ProductEvent as prod, OrderEvent as ord

Last, you may invoke an instance method on each event of a stream, and pass parameters to the instance method as well. Instance method calls are allowed anywhere in an expression.

The next statement demonstrates this capability by invoking a method 'computeTotal' on OrderEvent events and a method 'getMultiplier' on ProductEvent events:

select ord.computeTotal(prod.getMultiplier()) from ProductEvent as prod, OrderEvent as ord

The aggregate functions are sum, avg, count, max, min, median, stddev, avedev. You can use aggregate functions to calculate and summarize data from event properties. For example, to find out the total price for all stock tick events in the last 30 seconds, type:

select sum(price) from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec)

Here is the syntax for aggregate functions:

aggregate_function( [all | distinct] expression)

You can apply aggregate functions to all events in an event stream window or other view, or to one or more groups of events. From each set of events to which an aggregate function is applied, Esper generates a single value.

Expression is usually an event property name. However it can also be a constant, function, or any combination of event property names, constants, and functions connected by arithmetic operators.

For example, to find out the average price for all stock tick events in the last 30 seconds if the price was doubled:

select avg(price * 2) from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 seconds)

You can use the optional keyword distinct with all aggregate functions to eliminate duplicate values before the aggregate function is applied. The optional keyword all which performs the operation on all events is the default.

You can use aggregation functions in a select clause and in a having clause. You cannot use aggregate functions in a where clause, but you can use the where clause to restrict the events to which the aggregate is applied. The next query computes the average and sum of the price of stock tick events for the symbol IBM only, for the last 10 stock tick events regardless of their symbol.

select 'IBM stats' as title, avg(price) as avgPrice, sum(price) as sumPrice
from StockTickEvent.win:length(10)
where symbol='IBM'

In the above example the length window of 10 elements is not affected by the where clause, i.e. all events enter and leave the length window regardless of their symbol. If we only care about the last 10 IBM events, we need to add filter criteria as below.

select 'IBM stats' as title, avg(price) as avgPrice, sum(price) as sumPrice
from StockTickEvent(symbol='IBM').win:length(10)
where symbol='IBM'

You can use aggregate functions with any type of event property or expression, with the following exceptions:

Esper ignores any null values returned by the event property or expression on which the aggregate function is operating, except for the count(*) function, which counts null values as well. All aggregate functions return null if the data set contains no events, or if all events in the data set contain only null values for the aggregated expression.

The group by clause is optional in all EPL statements. The group by clause divides the output of an EPL statement into groups. You can group by one or more event property names, or by the result of computed expressions. When used with aggregate functions, group by retrieves the calculations in each subgroup. You can use group by without aggregate functions, but generally that can produce confusing results.

For example, the below statement returns the total price per symbol for all stock tick events in the last 30 seconds:

select symbol, sum(price) from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) group by symbol

The syntax of the group by clause is:

group by arregate_free_expression [, arregate_free_expression] [, ...]

Esper places the following restrictions on expressions in the group by clause:

You can list more then one expression in the group by clause to nest groups. Once the sets are established with group by the aggregation functions are applied. This statement posts the median volume for all stock tick events in the last 30 seconds per symbol and tick data feed. Esper posts one event for each group to statement listeners:

select symbol, tickDataFeed, median(volume) 
from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) 
group by symbol, tickDataFeed

In the statement above the event properties in the select list (symbol, tickDataFeed) are also listed in the group by clause. The statement thus follows the SQL standard which prescribes that non-aggregated event properties in the select list must match the group by columns.

Esper also supports statements in which one or more event properties in the select list are not listed in the group by clause. The statement below demonstrates this case. It calculates the standard deviation for the last 30 seconds of stock ticks aggregating by symbol and posting for each event the symbol, tickDataFeed and the standard deviation on price.

select symbol, tickDataFeed, stddev(price) from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) group by symbol

The above example still aggregates the price event property based on the symbol, but produces one event per incoming event, not one event per group.

Additionally, Esper supports statements in which one or more event properties in the group by clause are not listed in the select list. This is an example that calculates the mean deviation per symbol and tickDataFeed and posts one event per group with symbol and mean deviation of price in the generated events. Since tickDataFeed is not in the posted results, this can potentially be confusing.

select symbol, avedev(price) 
from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) 
group by symbol, tickDataFeed

Expressions are also allowed in the group by list:

select symbol * price, count(*) from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) group by symbol * price

If the group by expression resulted in a null value, the null value becomes its own group. All null values are aggregated into the same group. If you are using the count(expression) aggregate function which does not count null values, the count returns zero if only null values are encountered.

You can use a where clause in a statement with group by. Events that do not satisfy the conditions in the where clause are eliminated before any grouping is done. For example, the statement below posts the number of stock ticks in the last 30 seconds with a volume larger then 100, posting one event per group (symbol).

select symbol, count(*) from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) where volume > 100 group by symbol

Use the having clause to pass or reject events defined by the group-by clause. The having clause sets conditions for the group by clause in the same way where sets conditions for the select clause, except where cannot include aggregate functions, while having often does.

This statement is an example of a having clause with an aggregate function. It posts the total price per symbol for the last 30 seconds of stock tick events for only those symbols in which the total price exceeds 1000. The having clause eliminates all symbols where the total price is equal or less then 1000.

select symbol, sum(price) 
from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) 
group by symbol 
having sum(price) > 1000

To include more then one condition in the having clause combine the conditions with and, or or not. This is shown in the statement below which selects only groups with a total price greater then 1000 and an average volume less then 500.

select symbol, sum(price), avg(volume)
from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) 
group by symbol 
having sum(price) > 1000 and avg(volume) < 500

Esper places the following restrictions on expressions in the having clause:

A statement with the having clause should also have a group by clause. If you omit group-by, all the events not excluded by the where clause return as a single group. In that case having acts like a where except that having can have aggregate functions.

The having clause can also be used without group by clause as the below example shows. The example below posts events where the price is less then the current running average price of all stock tick events in the last 30 seconds.

select symbol, price, avg(price) 
from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) 
having price < avg(price)

When you include filters, the where condition, the group by clause and the having condition in an EPL statement the sequence in which each clause affects events determines the final result:

The following query illustrates the use of filter, where, group by and having clauses in one statement with a select clause containing an aggregate function.

select tickDataFeed, stddev(price)
from StockTickEvent(symbol='IBM').win:length(10) 
where volume > 1000
group by tickDataFeed 
having stddev(price) > 0.8

Esper filters events using the filter criteria for the event stream StockTickEvent. In the example above only events with symbol IBM enter the length window over the last 10 events, all other events are simply discarded. The where clause removes any events posted by the length window (events entering the window and event leaving the window) that do not match the condition of volume greater then 1000. Remaining events are applied to the stddev standard deviation aggregate function for each tick data feed as specified in the group by clause. Each tickDataFeed value generates one event. Esper applies the having clause and only lets events pass for tickDataFeed groups with a standard deviation of price greater then 0.8.

The group by clause as well as the built-in std:groupby view are similar in their ability to group events. This section explains the key differences in their behavior and use.

The group by clause works together with aggregation functions in your statement to produce an aggregation result per group. In greater detail, this means that when a new event arrives, the engine applies the expressions in the group by clause to determine a grouping key. If the engine has not encountered that grouping key before (a new group), the engine creates a set of new aggregation results for that grouping key and performs the aggregation changing that new set of aggregation results. If the grouping key points to an existing set of prior aggregation results (an existing group), the engine performs the aggregation changing the prior set of aggregation results for that group.

The std:groupby view is a built-in view that also groups events. The view is described in greater detail in Section 8.2.2, “Group-By (std:groupby)”. Its primary use is to create a separate data window per group, or more generally to create separate instances of all its sub-views for each grouping key encountered.

The next example shows two queries that produce equivalent results. The query using the group by clause is generally preferable as is easier to read. The second form introduces the stat:uni view which computes univariate statistics for a given property:

select symbol, avg(price) from StockTickEvent group by symbol
// ... is equivalent to ...
select symbol, average from StockTickEvent.std:groupby(symbol).stat:uni(price)

The next example shows two queries that are NOT equivalent as the length window is ungrouped in the first query, and grouped in the second query:

select symbol, sum(price) from StockTickEvent.win:length(10) group by symbol
// ... NOT equivalent to ...
select symbol, sum(price) from StockTickEvent.std:groupby(symbol).win:length(10)

The key difference between the two statements is that in the first statement the length window is ungrouped and applies to all events regardless of group. While in the second query each group gets its own instance of a length window. For example, in the second query events arriving for symbol "ABC" get a length window of 10 events, and events arriving for symbol "DEF" get their own length window of 10 events.

The output clause is optional in Esper and is used to control or stabilize the rate at which events are output. The EPL language provides for several different ways to control output rate.

Here is the syntax for the output clause that specifies a rate in time interval or number of events:

output [all | first | last | snapshot] every output_rate [minutes | seconds | events]

An alternate syntax specifies the time period between output as outlined in Section 4.2.1, “Specifying Time Periods” :

output [all | first | last | snapshot] every time_period

A crontab-like schedule can also be specified. The schedule parameters follow the pattern observer parameters and are further described in Section 5.6.2.2, “timer:at” :

output [all | first | last | snapshot] at 
  (minutes, hours, days of month, months, days of week [, seconds])

Last, output can be controlled by an expression that may contain variables, user-defined functions and information about the number of collected events. Output that is controlled by an expression is discussed in detail below.

For example, the following statement outputs, every 60 seconds, the total price for all orders in the 30-minute time window:

select sum(price) from OrderEvent.win:time(30 min) output snapshot every 60 seconds

The all keyword is the default and specifies that all events in a batch should be output, each incoming row in the batch producing an output row. Note that for statements that group via the group by clause, the all keyword provides special behavior as below.

The first keyword specifies that only the first event in an output batch is to be output. Using the first keyword instructs the engine to output the first matching event as soon as it arrives, and then ignores matching events for the time interval or number of events specified. After the time interval elapsed, or the number of matching events has been reached, the next first matching event is output again and the following interval the engine again ignores matching events.

The last keyword specifies to only output the last event at the end of the given time interval or after the given number of matching events have been accumulated. Again, for statements that group via the group by clause the last keyword provides special behavior as below.

The snapshot keyword indicates that the engine output current computation results considering all events as per views specified and/or current aggregation results. While the other keywords control how a batch of events between output intervals is being considered, the snapshot keyword outputs all current state of a statement independent of the last batch. It's output is equivalent to the iterator method provided by a statement.

The output_rate is the frequency at which the engine outputs events. It can be specified in terms of time or number of events. The value can be a number to denote a fixed output rate, or the name of a variable whose value is the output rate. By means of a variable the output rate can be controlled externally and changed dynamically at runtime.

Please consult the Appendix A, Output Reference and Samples for detailed information on insert and remove stream output for the various output clause keywords.

The time interval can also be specified in terms of minutes; the following statement is identical to the first one.

select * from StockTickEvent.win:length(5) output every 1.5 minutes

A second way that output can be stabilized is by batching events until a certain number of events have been collected. The next statement only outputs when either 5 (or more) new or 5 (or more) old events have been batched.

select * from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) output every 5 events

Additionally, event output can be further modified by the optional last keyword, which causes output of only the last event to arrive into an output batch.

select * from StockTickEvent.win:time(30 sec) output last every 5 events

Using the first keyword you can be notified at the start of the interval. The allows to watch for situations such as a rate falling below a threshold and only be informed every now and again after the specified output interval, but be informed the moment it first happens.

select * from TickRate.win:time(30 seconds) where rate<100 output first every 60 seconds

A sample statement using the Unix "crontab"-command schedule is shown next. See Section 5.6.2.2, “timer:at” for details on schedule syntax. Here, output occurs every 15 minutes from 8am to 5:45pm (hours 8 to 17 at 0, 15, 30 and 45 minutes past the hour):

select symbol, sum(price) from StockTickEvent group by symbol output at (*/15, 8:17, *, *, *)

output [all | first | last | snapshot] when trigger_expression 
    [then set variable_name = assign_expression [, variable_name = assign_expression [,...]]]

select sum(price) from StockTickEvent output when OutputTriggerVar = true

select sum(price) from StockTickEvent 
  output when OutputTriggerVar = true  
  then set OutputTriggerVar = false

Remove stream events can also useful in conjunction with aggregation and the output clause: When the engine posts remove stream events for fully-aggregated queries, it presents the aggregation state before the expiring event leaves the data window. Your application can thus easily obtain a delta between the new aggregation value and the prior aggregation value.

The engine evaluates the having-clause at the granularity of the data posted by views. That is, if you utilize a time window and output every 10 events, the having clause applies to each individual event or events entering and leaving the time window (and not once per batch of 10 events).

The output clause interacts in two ways with the group by and having clauses. First, in the output every n events case, the number n refers to the number of events arriving into the group by clause. That is, if the group by clause outputs only 1 event per group, or if the arriving events don't satisfy the having clause, then the actual number of events output by the statement could be fewer than n.

Second, the last and all keywords have special meanings when used in a statement with aggregate functions and the group by clause:

Please consult the Appendix A, Output Reference and Samples for detailed information on insert and remove stream output for aggregation and group-by.

By adding an output rate limiting clause to a statement that contains a group by clause we can control output of groups to obtain one row for each group, generating an event per group at the given output frequency:

select symbol, sum(price) from StockTickEvent group by symbol output all every 5 seconds

Output rate limiting provides output events to your application in regular intervals. Between intervals, the engine uses a buffer to hold events until the output condition is reached. If your application has high-volume streams, you may need to be mindful of the memory needs for output rates.

The output clause with the snapshot keyword does not require a buffer, all other output keywords do consume memory until the output condition is reached.

Sometimes your events may carry properties that are themselves event objects. Therefore EPL offers a special syntax to insert the value of a property itself as an event into a stream:

insert into stream_name select property_name.* from ...

This feature is only supported for JavaBean events and is not supported for Map or XML events. Nested property names are also not supported.

In this example, the class Summary with properties bid and ask that are of type Quote is:

public class Summary {
  private Quote bid;
  private Quote ask;
  ...

The statement to populate a stream of Quote events is thus:

insert into MyBidStream select bid.* from Summary

The insert into clause allows to merge multiple event streams into a event single stream. The clause names an event stream to insert into by specifing an event_stream_name. The first statement that inserts into the named stream defines the stream's event types. Further statements that insert into the same event stream must match the type of events inserted into the stream as declared by the first statement.

One approach to merging event streams specifies individual colum names either in the select clause or in the insert into clause of the statement. This approach has been shown in earlier examples.

Another approach to merging event streams specifies the wildcard (*) in the select clause (or the stream wildcard) to select the underlying event. The events in the event stream must then have the same event type as generated by the from clause.

Assume a statement creates an event stream named MergedStream by selecting OrderEvent events:

insert into MergedStream select * from OrderEvent

A statement can use the stream wildcard selector to select only OrderEvent events in a join:

insert into MergedStream select ord.* from ItemScanEvent, OrderEvent as ord

And a statement may also use an application-supplied user-defined function to convert events to OrderEvent instances:

insert into MergedStream select MyLib.convert(item) from ItemScanEvent as item

Esper specifically recognizes a conversion function: A conversion function must be the only selected column, and it must return either a Java object or java.util.Map.

A variant stream is a predefined stream into which events of multiple disparate event types can be inserted.

A variant stream name may appear anywhere in a pattern or from clause. In a pattern, a filter against a variant stream matches any events of any of the event types inserted into the variant stream. In a from clause including for named windows, views declared onto a variant stream may hold events of any of the event types inserted into the variant stream.

A variant stream is thus useful in problems that require different types of event to be treated the same.

Variant streams are predefined via runtime or initialization-time configuration as described in Section 10.4.21, “Variant Stream”. Your application may predefine variant streams to carry events of a limited set of event types, or you may choose the variant stream to carry any and all types of events. This choice affects what event properties are available for consuming statements or patterns of the variant stream.

Assume that an application predefined a variant stream named OrderStream to carry only ServiceOrder and ProductOrder events. An insert into clause inserts events into the variant stream:

insert into OrderStream select * from ServiceOrder
insert into OrderStream select * from ProductOrder

Here is a sample statement that consumes the variant stream and outputs a total price per customer id for the last 30 seconds of ServiceOrder and ProductOrder events:

select customerId, sum(price) from OrderStream.win:time(30 sec) group by customerId

If your application predefines the variant stream to hold specific type of events, as the sample above did, then all event properties that are common to all specified types are visible on the variant stream, including nested, indexed and mapped properties. For access to properties that are only available on one of the types, the dynamic property syntax must be used. In the example above, the customerId and price were properties common to both ServiceOrder and ProductOrder events.

For example, here is a consuming statement that selects a service duraction property that only ServiceOrder events have, and that must therefore be casted to double and null values removed in order to aggregate:

select customerId, sum(coalesce(cast(serviceDuraction?, double), 0)) 
from OrderStream.win:time(30 sec) group by customerId

If your application predefines a variant stream to hold any type of events (the any type variance), then all event properties of the variant stream are effectively dynamic properties.

For example, an application may define an OutgoingEvents variant stream to hold any type of event. The next statement is a sample consumer of the OutgoingEvents variant stream that looks for the destination property and fires for each event in which the property exists with a value of 'email':

select * from OutgoingEvents(destination = 'email')

Your select clause may use the '*' wildcard together with further expressions to populate a stream of events. A sample statement is:

insert into OrderStream select *, price*units as linePrice from PurchaseOrder

When using wildcard and selecting additional expression results, the engine produces what is called decorating events for the resulting stream. Decorating events add additional property values to an underlying event.

In the above example the resulting OrderStream consists of underlying PurchaseOrder events decorated by a linePrice property that is a result of the price*units expression.

In order to use insert into to insert into an existing stream of decorated events, your underlying event type must match, and all additional decorating property names and types of the select clause must also match.

Your select clause may use the stream name to populate a stream of events in which each event has properties that are itself an event. A sample statement is:

insert into CompositeStream select order, service, order.price+service.price as totalPrice 
from PurchaseOrder.std:lastevent() as order, ServiceEvent:std:lastevent() as service

When using the stream name (or tag in patterns) in the select clause, the engine produces composite events: One or more of the properties of the composite event are events themselves.

In the above example the resulting CompositeStream consists of 3 columns: the PurchaseOrder event, the ServiceEvent event and the totalPrice property that is a result of the order.price+service.price expression.

In order to use insert into to insert into an existing stream of events in which properties are themselves events, each event column's event type must match, and all additional property names and types of the select clause must also match.

Your insert into clause may also directly instantiate and populate application underlying event objects or Map event objects. This is described in greater detail in Section 2.11, “Event Objects Populated by Insert Into”.

The exists condition is considered "to be met" if the subquery returns at least one row. The not exists condition is considered true if the subquery returns no rows.

The synopsis for the exists keyword is as follows:

exists (subquery)

Let's take a look at a simple example. The following is an EPL statement that uses the exists condition:

select assetId from RFIDEvent as RFID 
  where exists (select * from Asset.std:unique(assetId) where assetId = RFID.assetId)

This select statement will return all RFID events where there is at least one event in Assets unique by asset id with the same asset id.

The in subquery condition is true if the value of an expression matches one or more of the values returned by the subquery. Consequently, the not in condition is true if the value of an expression matches none of the values returned by the subquery.

The synopsis for the in keyword is as follows:

expression in (subquery)

The right-hand side subquery must return exactly one column.

The next statement demonstrates the use of the in subquery condition:

select assetId from RFIDEvent
  where zone in (select zone from ZoneUpdate(status = 'closed').win:time(10 min))

The above statement demonstrated the in subquery to select RFID events for which the zone status is in a closed state.

Note that if the left-hand expression yields null, or if there are no equal right-hand values and at least one right-hand row yields null, the result of the in construct will be null, not false (or true for not-in). This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

The any subquery condition is true if the expression returns true for one or more of the values returned by the subquery.

The synopsis for the any keyword is as follows:

expression operator any (subquery)
expression operator some (subquery)

The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each row of the subquery result using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of any is "true" if any true result is obtained. The result is "false" if no true result is found (including the special case where the subquery returns no rows).

The operator can be any of the following values: =, !=, <>, <, <=, >, >=.

The some keyword is a synonym for any. The in construct is equivalent to = any.

The right-hand side subquery must return exactly one column.

The next statement demonstrates the use of the any subquery condition:

select * from ProductOrder as ord
  where quantity < any
    (select minimumQuantity from MinimumQuantity.win:keepall())

The above query compares ProductOrder event's quantity value with all rows from the MinimumQuantity stream of events and returns only those ProductOrder events that have a quantity that is less then any of the minimum quantity values of the MinimumQuantity events.

Note that if there are no successes and at least one right-hand row yields null for the operator's result, the result of the any construct will be null, not false. This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

The all subquery condition is true if the expression returns true for all of the values returned by the subquery.

The synopsis for the all keyword is as follows:

expression operator all (subquery)

The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each row of the subquery result using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of all is "true" if all rows yield true (including the special case where the subquery returns no rows). The result is "false" if any false result is found. The result is null if the comparison does not return false for any row, and it returns null for at least one row.

The operator can be any of the following values: =, !=, <>, <, <=, >, >=.

The not in construct is equivalent to != all.

The right-hand side subquery must return exactly one column.

The next statement demonstrates the use of the all subquery condition:

select * from ProductOrder as ord
  where quantity < all
    (select minimumQuantity from MinimumQuantity.win:keepall())

The above query compares ProductOrder event's quantity value with all rows from the MinimumQuantity stream of events and returns only those ProductOrder events that have a quantity that is less then all of the minimum quantity values of the MinimumQuantity events.

To join an event stream against stored data, specify the sql keyword followed by the name of the database and a parameterized SQL query. The syntax to use in the from clause of an EPL statement is:

sql:database_name [" parameterized_sql_query "]

The engine uses the database_name identifier to obtain configuration information in order to establish a database connection, as well as settings that control connection creation and removal. Please see Section 10.4.8, “Relational Database Access” to configure an engine for database access.

Following the database name is the SQL query to execute. The SQL query can contain one or more substitution parameters. The SQL query string is placed in single brackets [ and ]. The SQL query can be placed in either single quotes (') or double quotes ("). The SQL query grammer is passed to your database software unchanged, allowing you to write any SQL query syntax that your database understands, including stored procedure calls.

Substitution parameters in the SQL query string take the form ${event_property_name}. The engine resolves event_property_name at statement execution time to the actual event property value supplied by the events in the joined event stream.

The engine determines the type of the SQL query output columns by means of the result set metadata that your database software returns for the statement. The actual query results are obtained via the getObject on java.sql.ResultSet.

The sample EPL statement below joins an event stream consisting of CustomerCallEvent events with the results of an SQL query against the database named MyCustomerDB and table Customer:

select custId, cust_name from CustomerCallEvent,
  sql:MyCustomerDB [' select cust_name from Customer where cust_id = ${custId} ']

The example above assumes that CustomerCallEvent supplies an event property named custId. The SQL query selects the customer name from the Customer table. The where clause in the SQL matches the Customer table column cust_id with the value of custId in each CustomerCallEvent event. The engine executes the SQL query for each new CustomerCallEvent encountered.

If the SQL query returns no rows for a given customer id, the engine generates no output event. Else the engine generates one output event for each row returned by the SQL query. An outer join as described in the next section can be used to control whether the engine should generate output events even when the SQL query returns no rows.

The next example adds a time window of 30 seconds to the event stream CustomerCallEvent. It also renames the selected properties to customerName and customerId to demonstrate how the naming of columns in an SQL query can be used in the select clause in the EPL query. And the example uses explicit stream names via the as keyword.

select customerId, customerName from
  CustomerCallEvent.win:time(30 sec) as cce,
  sql:MyCustomerDB ["select cust_id as customerId, cust_name as customerName from Customer 
                  where cust_id = ${cce.custId}"] as cq

Any window, such as the time window, generates insert stream (istream) events as events enter the window, and remove stream (rstream) events as events leave the window. The engine executes the given SQL query for each CustomerCallEvent in both the insert stream and the remove stream. As a performance optimization, the istream or rstream keywords in the select clause can be used to instruct the engine to only join insert stream or remove stream events, reducing the number of SQL query executions.

Consider using the EPL where clause to join the SQL query result to your event stream. Similar to EPL joins and outer-joins that join event streams or patterns, the EPL where clause provides join criteria between the SQL query results and the event stream (as a side note, an SQL where clause is a filter of rows executed by your database on your database server before returning SQL query results).

Esper analyzes the expression in the EPL where clause and outer-join on clause, if present, and builds the appropriate indexes from that information at runtime, to ensure fast matching of event stream events to SQL query results, even if your SQL query returns a large number of rows. Your applications must ensure to configure a cache for your database using Esper configuration, as such indexes are held with regular data in a cache. If you application does not enable caching of SQL query results, the engine does not build indexes on cached data.

The sample EPL statement below joins an event stream consisting of OrderEvent events with the results of an SQL query against the database named MyRefDB and table SymbolReference:

select symbol, symbolDesc from OrderEvent as orders,
  sql:MyRefDB ['select symbolDesc from SymbolReference'] as reference
  where reference.symbol = orders.symbol

Notice how the EPL where clause joins the OrderEvent stream to the SymbolReference table. In this example, the SQL query itself does not have a SQL where clause and therefore returns all rows from table SymbolReference.

If your application enables caching, the SQL query fires only at the arrival of the first OrderEvent event. When the second OrderEvent arrives, the join execution uses the cached query result. If the caching policy that you specified in the Esper database configuration evicts the SQL query result from cache, then the engine fires the SQL query again to obtain a new result and places the result in cache.

If SQL result caching is enabled and your EPL where clause, as show in the above example, provides the properties to join, then the engine indexes the SQL query results in cache and retains the index together with the query result in cache. Thus your application can benefit from high performance index-based lookups as long as the SQL query results are found in cache.

The SQL result caches operate on the level of all result rows for a given parameter set. For example, if your query returns 10 rows for a certain set of parameter values then the cache treats all 10 rows as a single entry keyed by the parameter values, and the expiry policy applies to all 10 rows and not to each individual row.

It is also possible to join multiple autonomous database systems in a single query, for example:

select symbol, symbolDesc from OrderEvent as orders,
  sql:My_Oracle_DB ['select symbolDesc from SymbolReference'] as reference,
  sql:My_MySQL_DB ['select orderList from orderHistory'] as history
  where reference.symbol = orders.symbol
  and history.symbol = orders.symbol 

You can use outer joins to join data obtained from an SQL query and control when an event is produced. Use a left outer join, such as in the next statement, if you need an output event for each event regardless of whether or not the SQL query returns rows. If the SQL query returns no rows, the join result populates null values into the selected properties.

select custId, custName from
  CustomerCallEvent as cce
  left outer join 
  sql:MyCustomerDB ["select cust_id, cust_name as custName 
                     from Customer where cust_id = ${cce.custId}"] as cq
  on cce.custId = cq.cust_id

The statement above always generates at least one output event for each CustomerCallEvent, containing all columns selected by the SQL query, even if the SQL query does not return any rows. Note the on expression that is required for outer joins. The on acts as an additional filter to rows returned by the SQL query.

Pattern statements and SQL queries can also be applied together in useful ways. One such use is to poll or request data from a database at regular intervals or following the schedule of the crontab-like timer:at.

The next statement is an example that shows a pattern that fires every 5 seconds to query the NewOrder table for new orders:

insert into NewOrders
select orderId, orderAmount from
  pattern [every timer:interval(5 sec)],
  sql:MyCustomerDB ['select orderId, orderAmount from NewOrders']

Usually your SQL query will take part in a join and thus be triggered by an event or pattern occurrence. Instead, your application may need to poll a SQL query and thus use Esper query execution and caching facilities and obtain event data and metadata.

Your EPL statement can specify an SQL statement without a join. Such a stand-alone SQL statement does not post new events, and may only be queried via the iterator poll API. Your EPL and SQL statement may still use variables.

The next statement assumes that a price_var variable has been declared. It selects from the relational database table named NewOrder all rows in which the price column is greater then the current value of the price_var EPL variable:

select * from sql:MyCustomerDB ['select * from NewOrder where ${price_var} > price']

Use the iterator and safeIterator methods on EPStatement to obtain results. The statement does not post events to listeners, it is strictly passive in that sense.

The engine translates SQL queries into JDBC java.sql.PreparedStatement statements by replacing ${name} parameters with '?' placeholders. It obtains name and type of result columns from the compiled PreparedStatement meta data when the EPL statement is created.

The engine supplies parameters to the compiled statement via the setObject method on PreparedStatement. The engine uses the getObject method on the compiled statement PreparedStatement to obtain column values.

Certain JDBC database drivers are known to not return metadata for precompiled prepared SQL statements. This can be a problem as metadata is required by Esper. Esper obtains SQL result set metadata to validate an EPL statement and to provide column types for output events. JDBC drivers that do not provide metadata for precompiled SQL statements require a workaround. Such drivers do generally provide metadata for executed SQL statements, however do not provide the metadata for precompiled SQL statements.

Please consult the Chapter 10, Configuration for the configuration options available in relation to metadata retrieval.

To obtain metadata for an SQL statement, Esper can alternatively fire a SQL statement which returns the same column names and types as the actual SQL statement but without returning any rows. This kind of SQL statement is referred to as a sample statement in below workaround description. The engine can then use the sample SQL statement to retrieve metadata for the column names and types returned by the actual SQL statement.

Applications can provide a sample SQL statement to retrieve metadata via the metadatasql keyword:

sql:database_name ["parameterized_sql_query" metadatasql "sql_meta_query"] 

The sql_meta_query must be an SQL statement that returns the same number of columns, the same type of columns and the same column names as the parameterized_sql_query, and does not return any rows.

Alternatively, applications can choose not to provide an explicit sample SQL statement. If the EPL statement does not use the metadatasql syntax, the engine applies lexical analysis to the SQL statement. From the lexical analysis Esper generates a sample SQL statement adding a restrictive clause "where 1=0" to the SQL statement.

Alternatively, you can add the following tag to the SQL statement: ${$ESPER-SAMPLE-WHERE}. If the tag exists in the SQL statement, the engine does not perform lexical analysis and simply replaces the tag with the SQL where clause "where 1=0". Therefore this workaround is applicable to SQL statements that cannot be correctly lexically analyzed. The SQL text after the placeholder is not part of the sample query. For example:

select mycol from sql:myDB [
  'select mycol from mytesttable ${$ESPER-SAMPLE-WHERE} where ....'], ...

If your parameterized_sql_query SQL query contains vendor-specific SQL syntax, generation of the metadata query may fail to produce a valid SQL statement. If you experience an SQL error while fetching metadata, use any of the above workarounds with the Oracle JDBC driver.

The syntax for a method invocation in the from clause of an EPL statement is:

method:class_name.method_name[(parameter_expressions)]

The method keyword denotes a method invocation. It is followed by a class name and a method name separated by a dot (.) character. If you have parameters to your method invocation, these are placed in round brackets after the method name. Any expression is allowed as a parameter, and individual parameter expressions are separated by a comma. Expressions may also use event properties of the joined stream.

In the sample join statement shown next, the method 'lookupAsset' provided by class 'MyLookupLib' returns one or more rows based on the asset id (a property of the AssetMoveEvent) that is passed to the method:

select * from AssetMoveEvent, method:MyLookupLib.lookupAsset(assetId)

The following statement demonstrates the use of the where clause to join events to the rows returned by a method invocation, which in this example does not take parameters:

select assetId, assetDesc from AssetMoveEvent as asset, 
       method:MyLookupLib.getAssetDescriptions() as desc 
where asset.assetid = desc.assetid

Your method invocation may return zero, one or many rows for each method invocation. If you have caching enabled through configuration, then Esper can avoid the method invocation and instead use cached results. Similar to SQL joins, Esper also indexes cached result rows such that join operations based on the where clause or outer-join on clause can be very efficient, especially if your method invocation returns a large number of rows.

If the time taken by method invocations is critical to your application, you may configure local caches as Section 10.4.6, “Cache Settings for From-Clause Method Invocations” describes.

Esper analyzes the expression in the EPL where clause and outer-join on clause, if present, and builds the appropriate indexes from that information at runtime, to ensure fast matching of event stream events to method invocation results, even if your method invocation returns a large number of rows. Your applications must ensure to configure a cache for your method invocation using Esper configuration, as such indexes are held with regular data in a cache. If you application does not enable caching of method invocation results, the engine does not build indexes on cached data.

Usually your method invocation will take part in a join and thus be triggered by an event or pattern occurrence. Instead, your application may need to poll a method invocation and thus use Esper query execution and caching facilities and obtain event data and metadata.

Your EPL statement can specify a method invocation in the from clause without a join. Such a stand-alone method invocation does not post new events, and may only be queried via the iterator poll API. Your EPL statement may still use variables.

The next statement assumes that a category_var variable has been declared. It polls the getAssetDescriptions method passing the current value of the category_var EPL variable:

select * from method:MyLookupLib.getAssetDescriptions(category_var)]

Use the iterator and safeIterator methods on EPStatement to obtain results. The statement does not post events to listeners, it is strictly passive in that sense.

Your application must provide a Java class that exposes a public static method. The method must accept the same number and type of parameters as listed in the parameter expression list.

If your method invocation returns either no row or only one row, then the return type of the method can be a Java class or a java.util.Map. If your method invocation can return more then one row, then the return type of the method must be an array of Java class or an array of Map.

If you are using a Java class or an array of Java class as the return type, then the class must adhere to JavaBean conventions: it must expose properties through getter methods.

If you are using java.util.Map as the return type or an array of Map, then the map should have String-type keys and object values (Map<String, Object>). When using Map as the return type, your application must provide a second method that returns property metadata, as the next section outlines.

Your application method must return either of the following:

As an example, consider the method 'getAssetDescriptions' provided by class 'MyLookupLib' as discussed earlier:

select assetId, assetDesc from AssetMoveEvent as asset,
       method:com.mypackage.MyLookupLib.getAssetDescriptions() as desc 
  where asset.assetid = desc.assetid

The 'getAssetDescriptions' method may return multiple rows and is therefore declared to return an array of the class 'AssetDesc'. The class AssetDesc is a POJO class (not shown here):

public class MyLookupLib {
  ...
  public static AssetDesc[] getAssetDescriptions() {
    ...
    return new AssetDesc[] {...};
  }

The example above specifies the full Java class name of the class 'MyLookupLib' class in the EPL statement. The package name does not need to be part of the EPL if your application imports the package using the auto-import configuration through the API or XML, as outlined in Section 10.4.5, “Class and package imports”.

Your application may return java.util.Map or an array of Map from method invocations. If doing so, your application must provide metadata about each row: it must declare the property name and property type of each Map entry of a row. This information allows the engine to perform type checking of expressions used within the statement.

You declare the property names and types of each row by providing a method that returns property metadata. The metadata method must follow these conventions:

In the following example, a class 'MyLookupLib' provides a method to return historical data based on asset id and asset code:

select assetId, location, x_coord, y_coord from AssetMoveEvent as asset,
       method:com.mypackage.MyLookupLib.getAssetHistory(assetId, assetCode) as history

A sample implementation of the class 'MyLookupLib' is shown below.

public class MyLookupLib {
  ...
  // For each column in a row, provide the property name and type
  //
  public static Map<String, Class> getAssetHistoryMetadata() {
    Map<String, Class> propertyNames = new HashMap<String, Class>();
    propertyNames.put("location", String.class);
    propertyNames.put("x_coord", Integer.class);
    propertyNames.put("y_coord", Integer.class);
    return propertyNames;
  }
... 
  // Lookup rows based on assetId and assetCode
  // 
  public static Map<String, Object>[] getAssetHistory(String assetId, String assetCode) {
    Map rows = new Map[2];	// this sample returns 2 rows
    for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
      rows[i] = new HashMap();
      rows[i].put("location", "somevalue");
      rows[i].put("x_coord", 100);
      // ... set more values for each row
    }
    return rows;
  }

In the example above, the 'getAssetHistoryMetadata' method provides the property metadata: the names and types of properties in each row. The engine calls this method once per statement to determine event typing information.

The 'getAssetHistory' method returns an array of Map objects that are two rows. The implementation shown above is a simple example. The parameters to the method are the assetId and assetCode properties of the AssetMoveEvent joined to the method. The engine calls this method for each insert and remove stream event in AssetMoveEvent.

To indicate that no rows are found in a join, your application method may return either a null value or an array of size zero.

The create window statement creates a named window by specifying a window name and one or more data window views, as well as the type of event to hold in the named window.

There are two syntaxes for creating a named window: The first syntax allows to model a named window after an existing event type or an existing named window. The second syntax is similar to the SQL create-table syntax and provides a list of column names and column types.

A new named window starts up empty. It must be explicitly inserted into by one or more statements, as discussed below. A named window can also be populated at time of creation from an existing named window.

If your application stops or destroys the statement that creates the named window, any consuming statements no longer receive insert or remove stream events. The named window can also not be deleted from after it was stopped or destroyed.

The create window statement posts to listeners any events that are inserted into the named window as new data. The statement posts all deleted events or events that expire out of the data window to listeners as the remove stream (old data). The named window contents can also be iterated on via the pull API to obtain the current contents of a named window.

create window window_name.view_specifications 
    [as] [select list_of_properties from] event_type_or_windowname
    [insert [where filter_expression]]

create window AllOrdersNamedWindow.win:keepall() as OrderMapEventType

create window OrdersTimeWindow.win:time(30 sec) as 
  select symbol, volume, price from OrderEvent

create window OrdersTimeWindow.win:time(30 sec) as 
  select symbol as sym, volume as vol, price, 1 as alertId from OrderEvent

create window window_name.view_specifications [as] (column_name column_type 
  [,column_name column_type [,...])

create window SecurityEvent.win:time(30 sec) 
    (ipAddress string, userId String, numAttempts int)

An on delete clause removes events from a named window. The clause can be used to remove all events, or only events that match certain criteria, or events that correlate with an arriving event or a pattern of arriving events.

The syntax for the on delete clause is as follows:

on event_type[(filter_criteria)] [as stream_name]
delete from window_name [as stream_name]
[where criteria_expression]

The event_type is the name of the type of events that trigger removal from the named window. It is optionally followed by filter_criteria which are filter expressions to apply to arriving events. The optional as keyword can be used to assign an name for use in the where clause. Patterns and named windows can also be specified in the on clause as described in the next section.

The window_name is the name of the named window to delete events from. The as keyword is also available to assign a name to the named window.

The optional where clause contains a criteria_expression that correlates the arriving (triggering) event to the events to be removed from the named window. The criteria_expression may also simply filter for events in the named window to be removed from the named window.

The iterator of the EPStatement object representing the on delete clause can also be helpful: It returns the last batch of deleted events in response to the last triggering event, in any order, or null if the last triggering event did not remove any rows.

Let's look at a couple of examples. In the simplest form, this statement deletes all events from the named window 'AllOrdersNamedWindow' when any 'FlushOrderEvent' arrives:

on FlushOrderEvent delete from AllOrdersNamedWindow

This example adds a where clause to the example above. Upon arrival of a triggering 'ZeroVolumeEvent', the statement removes from the named window any orders that have a volume of zero or less:

on ZeroVolumeEvent delete from AllOrdersNamedWindow where volume <= 0

The next example shows a more complete use of the syntax, and correlates the triggering event with events held by the named window:

on NewOrderEvent(volume>0) as myNewOrders
delete from AllOrdersNamedWindow as myNamedWindow 
where myNamedWindow.symbol = myNewOrders.symbol

In the above sample statement, only if a 'NewOrderEvent' event with a volume greater then zero arrives does the statement trigger. Upon triggering, all events in the named window that have the same value for the symbol property as the triggering 'NewOrderEvent' event are then removed from the named window. The statement also showcases the as keyword to assign a name for use in the where expression.

For correlated queries (as above) that correlate triggering events with events held by a named window, Esper internally creates efficient indexes to enable high performance removal of events especially from named windows that hold large numbers of events.

Your application can subscribe a listener to your on delete statements to determine removed events. The statement post any events that are deleted from a named window to all listeners attached to the statement as new data. Upon iteration, the statement provides the last deleted event, if any.

on pattern [pattern_expression] [as stream_name]
delete from window_name [as stream_name]
[where criteria_expression]

on pattern [every timer:interval(10 sec)] delete from MyNamedWindow

on pattern [every ord=OrderEvent(volume>0) or every flush=FlushOrderEvent] 
delete from OrderWindow as win
where ord.id = win.id or flush.id = win.id

The insert into clause inserts events into named windows. Your application must ensure that the column names and types match the declared column names and types of the named window to be inserted into.

In this example we first create a named window using some of the columns of an OrderEvent event type:

create window OrdersWindow.win:keepall() as select symbol, volume, price from OrderEvent

The insert into the named window selects individual columns to be inserted:

insert into OrdersWindow(symbol, volume, price) select name, count, price from FXOrderEvent
// .. alternative form...
insert into OrdersWindow select name as symbol, vol as volume, price from FXOrderEvent

Following above statement, the engine enters every FXOrderEvent arriving into the engine into the named window 'OrdersWindow'.

The following EPL creates a named window for an event type backed by a Java class, and inserts into the window any 'OrderEvent' where the symbol value is IBM:

create window OrdersWindow as com.mycompany.OrderEvent
insert into OrdersWindow select * from com.mycompany.OrderEvent(symbol='IBM')

The last example adds one column named 'derivedPrice' to the 'OrderEvent' type by specifying a wildcard, and uses a user-defined function to populate the column:

create window OrdersWindow as select *, price as derivedPrice from OrderEvent
insert into OrdersWindow select *, MyFunc.func(price, percent) as derivedPrice from OrderEvent

Event representations based on Java base classes or interfaces, and subclasses or implementing classes, are compatible as these statements show:

// create a named window for the base class
create window OrdersWindow as select * from ProductBaseEvent

// The ServiceProductEvent class subclasses the ProductBaseEvent class
insert into OrdersWindow select * from ServiceProductEvent

// The MerchandiseProductEvent class subclasses the ProductBaseEvent class
insert into OrdersWindow select * from MerchandiseProductEvent

To avoid duplicate events stored in a named window, use a subquery to test whether an event already exists in the named window:

insert into OrdersWindow
select * from ServiceProductEvent as spe
where not exists (select * from OrdersWindow as win where win.id = spe.id)

A statement that removes events from a named window via the on delete clause and a statement that inserts events into a named window via the insert into can be combined to replace events in the named window, by creating the two statements in the order as indicated by the sample:

// create in this order
on ServiceProductEvent as spe delete from OrdersWindow as win where win.id = spe.id
insert into OrdersWindow select * from ServiceProductEvent

create window OrdersWindow as select *, price as priceTotal from OrderEvent

insert into OrdersWindow select *, price * unit as priceTotal from ServiceOrderEvent

create window OrdersWindow as select this, price as priceTotal from OrderEvent

insert into OrdersWindow select order, price * unit as priceTotal  
from ServiceOrderEvent as order

A named window can be referred to by any statement in the from clause of the statement. Filter criteria can also be specified. Additional views may be used onto named windows however such views cannot include data window views.

A statement selecting all events from a named window 'AllOrdersNamedWindow' is shown next. The named window must first be created via the create window clause before use.

select * from AllOrdersNamedWindow

The statement as above simply receives the unfiltered insert and remove stream of the named window and reports that stream to its listeners. The iterator method returns returns all events in the named window, if any.

The next statement derives an average price per symbol from all events posted by a named window:

select symbol, avg(price) from AllOrdersNamedWindow group by symbol

Your application may create a consuming statement such as above on an empty named window, or your application may create the above statement on an already filled named window. The engine provides correct results in either case: At the time of statement creation the Esper engine internally initializes the consuming statement from the current named window, also taking your declared filters into consideration. Thus, your statement deriving data from a named window does not start empty if the named window already holds one or more events. A consuming statement also sees the remove stream of an already populated named window, if any.

If you require a subset of the data in the named window, you can specify one or more filter expressions onto the named window as shown here:

select symbol, avg(price) from AllOrdersNamedWindow(sector='energy') group by symbol

By adding a filter to the named window, the aggregation and grouping as well as any views that may be declared onto to the named window receive a filtered insert and remove stream. The above statement thus outputs, continuously, the average price per symbol for all orders in the named window that belong to a certain sector.

A side note on variables in filters filtering events from named windows: The engine initializes consuming statements at statement creation time and changes aggregation state continuously as events arrive. If the filter criteria contain variables and variable values changes, then the engine does not re-evaluate or re-build aggregation state. In such a case you may want to place variables in the having clause which evaluates on already-built aggregation state.

The following example further declares a view into the named window. Such a view can be a plug-in view or one of the built-in views, but cannot be a data window view (with the exception of the group-by view which is allowed).

select * from AllOrdersNamedWindow(volume>0, price>0).mycompany:mypluginview()

Data window views cannot be used onto named windows since named windows post insert and remove streams for the events entering and leaving the named window, thus the expiry policy and batch behavior are well defined by the data window declared for the named window. For example, the following is not allowed and fails at time of statement creation:

// not a valid statement
select * from AllOrdersNamedWindow.win:time(30 sec)

The on select clause performs a one-time, non-continuous query on a named window every time a triggering event arrives or a triggering pattern matches. The query can consider all events in the named window, or only events that match certain criteria, or events that correlate with an arriving event or a pattern of arriving events.

The syntax for the on select clause is as follows:

on event_type[(filter_criteria)] [as stream_name]
[insert into insert_into_def]
select select_list
from window_name [as stream_name]
[where criteria_expression]
[group by grouping_expression_list]
[having grouping_search_conditions]
[order by order_by_expression_list]

The event_type is the name of the type of events that trigger the query against the named window. It is optionally followed by filter_criteria which are filter expressions to apply to arriving events. The optional as keyword can be used to assign an stream name. Patterns or named windows can also be specified in the on clause, see the samples in Section 4.17.2.1, “Using Patterns in the On Delete Clause”.

The insert into clause works as described in Section 4.10, “Merging Streams and Continuous Insertion: the Insert Into Clause”. The select clause is described in Section 4.3, “Choosing Event Properties And Events: the Select Clause”. For all clauses the semantics are equivalent to a join operation: The properties of the triggering event or events are available in the select clause and all other clauses.

The window_name in the from clause is the name of the named window to select events from. The as keyword is also available to assign a stream name to the named window. The as keyword is helpful in conjunction with wildcard in the select clause to select named window events via the syntax select streamname.* .

The optional where clause contains a criteria_expression that correlates the arriving (triggering) event to the events to be considered from the named window. The criteria_expression may also simply filter for events in the named window to be considered by the query.

The group by clause, the having clause and the order by clause are all optional and work as described in earlier chapters.

The similarities and differences between an on select clause and a regular or outer join are as follows:

The iterator of the EPStatement object representing the on select clause returns the last batch of selected events in response to the last triggering event, or null if the last triggering event did not select any rows.

For correlated queries that correlate triggering events with events held by a named window, Esper internally creates efficient indexes to enable high performance querying of events. It analyzes the where clause to build one or more indexes for fast lookup in the named window based on the properties of the triggering event.

The next statement demonstrates the concept. Upon arrival of a QueryEvent event the statement selects all events in the 'OrdersNamedWindow' named window:

on QueryEvent select win.* from OrdersNamedWindow as win

The engine executes the query on arrival of a triggering event, in this case a QueryEvent. It posts the query results to any listeners to the statement, in a single invocation, as the new data array. By prefixing the wildcard (*) selector with the stream name, the select clause returns only events of the named window and does not also return triggering events.

The where clause filters and correlates events in the named window with the triggering event, as shown next:

on QueryEvent(volume>0) as query
select query.symbol, query.volume, win.symbol  from OrdersNamedWindow as win
where win.symbol = query.symbol

Upon arrival of a QueryEvent, if that event has a value for the volume property that is greater then zero, the engine executes the query. The query considers all events currently held by the 'OrdersNamedWindow' that match the symbol property value of the triggering QueryEvent event. The engine then posts query results to the statement's listeners.

Aggregation, grouping and ordering of results are possible as this example shows:

on QueryEvent as queryEvent
select symbol, sum(volume) from OrdersNamedWindow as win
group by symbol
having volume > 0
order by symbol

The above statement outputs the total volume per symbol for those groups where the sum of the volume is greater then zero, ordered by symbol ascending. The engine computes and posts the output based on the current contents of the 'OrdersNamedWindow' named window considering all events in the named window, since the query does not have a where clause.

When using wildcard (*) to select from streams in an on-select clause, each stream, that is the the triggering stream and the selected-upon named window, are selected, similar to a join. Therefore your wildcard select returns two columns: the triggering event and the selection result event, for each row.

on QueryEvent as queryEvent
select * from OrdersNamedWindow as win

The query above returns a queryEvent column and a win column for each event. If only a single stream's event is desired in the result, use select win.* instead.

The on insert clause is an on select clause as described in the prior chapter with the addition of an insert into clause.

Similar to the on select clause, the engine executes the query when a triggering event arrives. It then provides the query results as an event stream to further statements. It populates the event stream that is named in the insert into clause.

The statement below provides the query results to any consumers of the MyOrderStream, upon arrival of a QueryEvent event:

on QueryEvent as query
insert into MyOrderStream
select win.* from OrdersNamedWindow as win

Here is a sample consuming statement of the MyOrderStream. The statement further filters the events provided by the on insert statement by user id and reports a total of volume per symbol:

select symbol, sum(volume) from MyOrderStream(userId='user1') group by symbol

Your EPL statement may specify the name of an existing named window when creating a new named window, and may use the insert keyword to indicate that the new named window is to be populated from the events currently held by the existing named window.

For example, and assuming the named window OrdersNamedWindow already exists, this statement creates a new named window ScratchOrders and populates all orders in OrdersNamedWindow into the new named window:

create window ScratchOrders as OrdersNamedWindow insert

The where keyword is also available to perform filtering, for example:

create window ScratchBuyOrders as OrdersNamedWindow insert where side = 'buy'

As outlined in Section 2.9, “Updating and Versioning Events”, revision event types process updates or new versions of events held by a named window.

A revision event type is simply one or more existing event types whose events are related by event properties that provide same key values. The purpose of key values is to indicate that arriving events are related: An event amends, updates or adds properties to an earlier event that shares the same key values.

Revision event types can be useful in these situations:

To better illustrate, consider a revision event type that represents events for creation and updates to user profiles. Lets assume the user profile creation events carry the user id and a full profile. The profile update events indicate only the user id and the individual properties that actually changed. The user id property shall serve as a key value relating profile creation events and update events.

A revision event type must be configured to instruct the engine which event types participate and what their key properties are. Configuration is described in Section 10.4.20, “Revision Event Type” and is not shown here.

Assume that an event type UserProfileRevisions has been configured to hold profile events, i.e. creation and update events related by user id. This statement creates a named window to hold the last 1 hour of current profiles per user id:

create window UserProfileWindow.win:time(1 hour) select * from UserProfileRevisions
insert into UserProfileWindow select * from UserProfileCreation
insert into UserProfileWindow select * from UserProfileUpdate

In revision event types, the term base event is used to describe events that are subject to update. Events that update, amend or add additional properties to base events are termed delta events. In the example, base events are profile creation events and delta events are profile update events.

Base events are expected to arrive before delta events. In the case where a delta event arrives and is not related by key value to a base event or a revision of the base event currently held by the named window the engine ignores the delta event. Thus, considering the example, profile update events for a user id that does not have an existing profile in the named window are not applied.

When a base or delta event arrives, the insert and remove stream output by the named window are the current and the prior version of the event. Let's come back to the example. As creation events arrive that are followed by update events or more creation events for the same user id, the engine posts the current version of the profile as insert stream (new data) and the prior version of the profile as remove stream (old data).

Base events are also implicitly delta events. That is, if multiple base events of the same key property values arrive, then each base event provides a new version. In the example, if multiple profile creation events arrive for the same user id then new versions of the current profile for that user id are output by the engine for each base event, as it does for delta events.

The expiry policy as specified by view definitions applies to each distinct key value, or multiple distinct key values for composite keys. An expiry policy re-evaluates when new versions arrive. In the example, user profile events expire from the time window when no creation or update event for a given user id has been received for 1 hour.

Several strategies are available for merging or overlaying events as the configuration chapter describes in greater detail.

Any of the Map, XML and JavaBean event representations as well as plug-in event representations may participate in a revision event type. For example, profile creation events could be JavaBean events, while profile update events could be java.util.Map events.

Delta events may also add properties to the revision event type. For example, one could add a new event type with security information to the revision event type and such security-related properties become available on the resulting revision event type.

The following restrictions apply to revision event types:

The create variable syntax creates a new variable by defining the variable type and name. In alternative to the syntax, variables can also be declared in the runtime and engine configuration options.

The synopsis for creating a variable is as follows:

create variable variable_type variable_name [ = assignment_expression ]

The variable_type can be any of the following:

variable_type
	:  string
	|  char 
	|  character
	|  bool 
	|  boolean
	|  byte
	|  short 
	|  int 
	|  integer 
	|  long 
	|  double
	|  float

The variable_name is an identifier that names the variable. The variable name should not already be in use by another variable.

The assignment_expression is optional. Without an assignment expression the initial value for the variable is null. If present, it supplies the initial value for the variable.

The EPStatement object of the create variable statement provides access to variable values. The pull API methods iterator and safeIterator return the current variable value. Listeners to the create variable statement subscribe to changes in variable value: the engine posts new and old value of the variable to all listeners when the variable value is updated by an on set statement.

The example below creates a variable that provides a threshold value. The name of the variable is var_threshold and its type is long. The variable's initial value is null as no other value has been assigned:

create variable long var_threshold

This statement creates an integer-type variable named var_output_rate and initializes it to the value ten (10):

create variable integer var_output_rate = 10

In addition to creating a variable via the create variable syntax, the runtime and engine configuration API also allows adding variables. The next code snippet illustrates the use of the runtime configuration API to create a string-typed variable:

epService.getEPAdministrator().getConfiguration()
  .addVariable("myVar", String.class, "init value");

The on set statement assigns a new value to one or more variables when a triggering event arrives or a triggering pattern occurs. Use the setVariableValue methods on EPRuntime to assign variable values programmatically.

The synopsis for setting variable values is:

on event_type[(filter_criteria)] [as stream_name]
  set variable_name = expression [, variable_name = expression [,...]]

The event_type is the name of the type of events that trigger the variable assignments. It is optionally followed by filter_criteria which are filter expressions to apply to arriving events. The optional as keyword can be used to assign an stream name. Patterns and named windows can also be specified in the on clause.

The comma-separated list of variable names and expressions set the value of one or more variables. All new variable values are applied atomically: the changes to variable values by the on set statement become visible to other statements all at the same time. No changes are visible to other processing threads until the on set statement completed processing, and at that time all changes become visible at once.

The EPStatement object provides access to variable values. The pull API methods iterator and safeIterator return the current variable values for each of the variables set by the statement. Listeners to the statement subscribe to changes in variable values: the engine posts new variable values of all variables to any listeners.

In the following example, a variable by name var_output_rate has been declared previously. When a NewOutputRateEvent event arrives, the variable is updated to a new value supplied by the event property 'rate':

on NewOutputRateEvent set var_output_rate = rate

The next example shows two variables that are updated when a ThresholdUpdateEvent arrives:

on ThresholdUpdateEvent as t 
  set var_threshold_lower = t.lower,
      var_threshold_higher = t.higher

The sample statement shown next counts the number of pattern matches using a variable. The pattern looks for OrderEvent events that are followed by CancelEvent events for the same order id within 10 seconds of the OrderEvent:

on pattern[every a=OrderEvent -> (CancelEvent(orderId=a.orderId) where timer:within(10 sec))]
  set var_counter = var_counter + 1

A variable name can be used in any expression and can also occur in an output rate limiting clause. This section presents examples and discusses performance, consistency and atomicity attributes of variables.

The next statement assumes that a variable named 'var_threshold' was created to hold a total price threshold value. The statement outputs an event when the total price for a symbol is greater then the current threshold value:

select symbol, sum(price) from TickEvent 
group by symbol 
having sum(price) > var_threshold

In this example we use a variable to dynamically change the output rate on-the-fly. The variable 'var_output_rate' holds the current rate at which the statement posts a current count to listeners:

select count(*) from TickEvent output every var_output_rate seconds

Variables are optimized towards high read frequency and lower write frequency. Variable reads do not incur locking overhead (99% of the time) while variable writes do incur locking overhead.

The engine softly guarantees consistency and atomicity of variables when your statement executes in response to an event or timer invocation. Variables acquire a stable value (implemented by versioning) when your statement starts executing in response to an event or timer invocation, and variables do not change value during execution. When one or more variable values are updated via on set statements, the changes to all updated variables become visible to statements as one unit and only when the on set statement completes successfully.

The atomicity and consistency guarantee is a soft guarantee. If any of your application statements, in response to an event or timer invocation, execute for a time interval longer then 15 seconds (default interval length), then the engine may use current variable values after 15 seconds passed, rather then then-current variable values at the time the statement started executing in response to an event or timer invocation.

The length of the time interval that variable values are held stable for the duration of execution of a given statement is by default 15 seconds, but can be configured via engine default settings.

The optional select clause provides control over which fields are available in output events. The expressions in the select clause apply only to the properties available underneath the property in the from clause, and the properties of the enclosing event.

When no select is specified, only the properties underneath the selected property are available in output events.

In summary, the select clause may contain:

The next query's select clause selects each review for each book, and the order id as well as the book id of each book:

select * from MediaOrder[select orderId, bookId from books.book][select * from review]
// ... equivalent to ...
select * from MediaOrder[select orderId, bookId from books.book][review]]

Listeners to the statement above receive an event for each review of each book. Each output event has all properties of the review row, and in addition the bookId of each book and the orderId of the order. Thus bookId and orderId are found in each result event, duplicated when there are multiple reviews per book and order.

The above query uses wildcard (*) to select all properties from reviews. As has been discussed as part of the select clause, the wildcard (*) and property_alias.* do not copy properties for performance reasons. The wildcard syntax instead specifies the underlying type, and additional properties are added onto that underlying type if required. Only one wildcard (*) and property_alias.* (unless used with a column rename) may therefore occur in the select clause list of expressions.

All the following queries produce an output event for each review of each book. The next sample queries illustrate the options available to control the fields of output events.

The output events produced by the next query have all properties of each review and no other properties available:

select * from MediaOrder[books.book][review]

The following query is not a valid query, since the order id and book id are not part of the contained-event selection:

// Invalid select clause: orderId and bookId not produced.
select orderId, bookId from MediaOrder[books.book][review]

This query is valid. Note that output events carry only the orderId and bookId properties and no other data:

select orderId, bookId from MediaOrder[books.book][select orderId, bookId from review]
//... equivalent to ...
select * from MediaOrder[select orderId, bookId from books.book][review]

This variation produces output events that have all properties of each book and only reviewId and comment for each review:

select * from MediaOrder[select * from books.book][select reviewId, comment from review]
// ... equivalent to ...
select * from MediaOrder[books.book as book][select book.*, reviewId, comment from review]

The output events of the next EPL have all properties of the order and only bookId and reviewId for each review:

select * from MediaOrder[books.book as book]
    [select mediaOrder.*, bookId, reviewId from review] as mediaOrder

This EPL produces output events with 3 columns: a column named mediaOrder that is the order itself, a column named book for each book and a column named review that holds each review:

insert into ReviewStream select * from MediaOrder[books.book as book]
  [select mo.* as mediaOrder, book.* as book, review.* as review from review as review] as mo
// .. and a sample consumer of ReviewStream...
select mediaOrder.orderId, book.bookId, review.reviewId from ReviewStream

Please note these limitations:

The optional where clause may be used to filter out properties at the same level that the where-clause occurs.

The properties in the filter expression must be relative to the property in the from clause or the enclosing event.

This query outputs all books with a given author:

select * from MediaOrder[books.book where author = 'Heinlein']

This query outputs each review of each book where a review comment contains the word 'good':

select * from MediaOrder[books.book][review where comment like 'good']

This section discusses contained-event selection in joins.

When joining within the same event it is not required that views are specified. Recall, in a join or outer join there must be views specified that hold the data to be joined. For self-joins, no views are required and the join executes against the data returned by the same event.

This query inner-joins items to books where book id matches the product id:

select book.bookId, item.itemId 
from MediaOrder[books.book] as book, 
      MediaOrder[items.item] as item 
where productId = bookId

Query results for the above query when sending the media order event as shown earlier are:

The next example query is a left outer join. It returns all books and their items, and for books without item it returns the book and a null value:

select book.bookId, item.itemId 
from MediaOrder[books.book] as book 
  left outer join 
    MediaOrder[items.item] as item 
  on productId = bookId

Query results for the above query when sending the media order event as shown earlier are:

A full outer join combines the results of both left and right outer joins. The joined table will contain all records from both tables, and fill in null values for missing matches on either side.

This example query is a full outer join, returning all books as well as all items, and filling in null values for book id or item id if no match is found:

select orderId, book.bookId,item.itemId 
from MediaOrder[books.book] as book 
  full outer join 
     MediaOrder[select orderId, * from items.item] as item 
  on productId = bookId 
order by bookId, item.itemId asc

As in all other continuous queries, aggregation results are cumulative from the time the statement was created.

The following query counts the cumulative number of items in which the product id matches a book id:

select count(*) 
from MediaOrder[books.book] as book, 
      MediaOrder[items.item] as item 
where productId = bookId

The unidirectional keyword in a join indicates to the query engine that aggregation state is not cumulative. The next query counts the number of items in which the product id matches a book id for each event:

select count(*) 
from MediaOrder[books.book] as book unidirectional, 
      MediaOrder[items.item] as item 
where productId = bookId