Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Punctuations

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 48 Accesses

Definition

A punctuation is an item embedded in a data stream that specifies a subset of the domain of that stream. A data item that belongs to the subset specified by a punctuation is said to match that punctuation. A data stream is said to be grammatical if, for each punctuation, no data items will follow that match that punctuation. Consider a stream of bids for online auctions. When an auction closes, a punctuation p is embedded in the stream that matches all bids for that auction. In a grammatical stream, p indicates no more bids will arrive from that stream for that auction.

In the most common format, a punctuation is a tuple of patterns, where each pattern corresponds to an attribute of the data items in a stream. Typically, four patterns are used: a wildcard (denoted by ‘*’) is matched by all values, a literal is matched by only the given value, a list (denoted by { }) is matched by any value in the given list, and a range(denoted by [ ]) is matched by any value that falls in...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Li J, Maier D, Tufte K, Papadimos V, Tucker PA. Semantics and evaluation techniques for window aggregates in data streams. In: ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data. ACM: New York; 2005. p. 311–22.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Tucker PA, Maier D, Sheard T, Fegaras L. Exploiting punctuation semantics in continuous data streams. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 2003;15(3):555–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Tucker PA, Maier D, Sheard T, Stephens P. Using punctuation sschemes to characterize strategies for querying over data streams. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 2007;19(9):1227–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

    David Maier

  2. Whitworth University, Spokane, WA, USA

    Peter A. Tucker

Authors
  1. David Maier
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Peter A. Tucker
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Maier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

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

    Ling Liu

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

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Uĝur Çetintemel

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Maier, D., Tucker, P.A. (2016). Punctuations. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_285-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_285-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Living Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

Publish with us

Policies and ethics