SECRET: A model for analysis of the execution semantics of stream processing systems

There are many academic and commercial stream processing engines (SPEs) today, each of them with its own execution semantics. This variation may lead to seemingly inexplica-ble differences in query results. In this paper, we present SECRET, a model of the behavior of SPEs. SECRET is a descriptive model that allows users to analyze the behavior of systems and understand the results of window-based queries for a broad range of heterogeneous SPEs. The model is the result of extensive analysis and experimentation with several commercial and academic engines. In the paper, we describe the types of heterogeneity found in existing engines, and show with experiments on real systems that our model can explain the key differences in windowing behavior. © 2010 VLDB Endowment.