1. A computer system including instructions recorded on a non-transitory computer-readable medium, the system comprising: a query handler configured to receive a query from a stream application to be applied against a stream of data including multiple tuples representing events; a stream window manager configured to express the query in a specification which defines a window including a subset of the tuples, the specification defining content of the window as a range of the tuples having a range attribute over which the content is specified, defining when to update the window using a synchronization attribute specifying a movement of the window over time with respect to the content, and defining an evaluation of the content of the window using an evaluation attribute specifying when to perform the evaluation; a query translator configured to translate the query into any one of a plurality of stream processing languages of a data stream management system (DSMS), and configured to translate the query into a stream processing language of the plurality of stream processing languages including mapping the range attribute, the synchronization attribute, and the evaluation attribute to the stream processing language of the data stream management system (DSMS), to thereby obtain a translated query; and a DSMS mediator configured to provide the translated query to the DSMS for processing therewith.