stream processing

— The most obvious advantage of stream processing is its ability to move many analytical or reporting processes into real time. Stream processing applications treat data not as static tables or files, but as a never-ending infinite stream that goes from what happened in the past into what will happen in the future. In database terms, instead of running a query on data collected in the past, stream processing involves running data as it arrives through a query so the results are incrementally generated as a continuous operation.