Patent ID: 7606891

Claim:
A method for processing event data comprising the computer-implemented steps of: receiving first event data that specifies times during a first interval of time of a first length at which a first set of one or more instances of an event occurred; determining, based upon the first event data, first occurrence frequencies of the event; receiving second event data that specifies times during a second interval of time of the first length at which a second set of one or more instances of the event occurred; determining, based upon the second event data, second occurrence frequencies of the event, the second occurrence frequencies being different from the first occurrence frequencies; determining, based upon the first occurrence frequencies and the second occurrence frequencies, a length of a third time interval that is to be used to select other instances of the event for event compression; wherein determining the length of the third time interval comprises, determining if the first occurrence frequencies are greater than the second occurrence frequencies then determining the length of the third interval to be greater than the first length, and determining if the first occurrence frequencies are less than the second occurrence frequencies then determining the length of the third interval to be less than the first length; receiving third event data that specifies times during the third interval of time at which a third set of one or more instances of the event occurred; and selecting for event compression, from the third set of one or more instances of the event, one or more particular instances of the event that occurred during the third time interval; and performing event compression on the selected one or more particular instances of the event that occurred during the third time interval.