EQL-CE: An Event Query Language for Connected Environment Management

Recent technological advances have fueled the rise of connected environments (e.g., smart buildings and cities). Event Query Languages (EQL) have been used to define (and later detect) events in these environments. However, existing languages are limited to the definition of event patterns. They share the following limitations: (i) lack of consideration of the environment, sensor network, and application domain in their queries; (ii) lack of provided query types for the definition/handling of components/component instances; (iii) lack of considered data and datatypes (e.g., scalar, multimedia) needed for the definition of specific events; and (iv) difficulty in coping with the dynamicity of the environments. To address the aforementioned limitations, we propose here an EQL specifically designed for connected environments, denoted EQL-CE. We describe its framework, detail the used language, syntax, and queries. Finally, we illustrate the usage of EQL-CE in a smart mall example.