Patent attributes
In a stream processing node, a producer of properly ordered portions of a data stream, hereinafter referred to as substreams, is coupled to a stream fabric that is further coupled to a series of potential consumers for the data stream, one of the potential consumers being a content processing element. The producer outputs the substreams to a stream queue that is associated with the data stream within the stream fabric. Subsequently, a portion of the data within the stream queue is copied and analyzed by the content processing element which determines what further actions are to be taken with respect to the data within the particular stream queue. These actions could include copying a further portion of the data within the stream queue to the content processing element for further analysis; redirecting the data within the stream queue to another consumer of the data stream, such as another processing element or an interface with a packet switched network; modifying a portion of the data within the stream queue; and/or transferring a portion of the data within the stream queue to another stream queue.