1. A method of processing high-volume continuous streams of data while maintaining minimal state information associated with the data, said method comprising: receiving a query comprising query data and operator semantics, said query representing a request for data; translating the received query into a plurality of stream algebra operators; defining an execution plan representing a data flow implemented by the stream algebra operators; receiving a first event from a data stream; assigning an expiration time to the received first event as a function of the query data; receiving a plurality of second events from the data stream; executing one or more of the stream algebra operators according to the defined execution plan and as a function of the operator semantics from the received query to find a match between the received first event and at least one of the received plurality of second events prior to expiration of the first event based on the assigned expiration time associated with the first event; and producing, as a function of said executing, a third event to be executed according to the execution plan.