1. A method comprising: providing a development environment for a dataflow programming language allowing specifying of at least one matcher state machine that can perform pattern matching in a received input stream and generate output data, wherein the development environment comprises a plurality of tools to perform at least one of the following: identifying a plurality of potential data streams; identifying a set of reactive functions and parameters corresponding to patterns of data in the streams; identifying a set of handling functions and parameters for transforming data matching declared patterns; identifying a set of timed events against which patterns of data flow are compared; creating a dataflow program from expressed intent which describes the identified streams, reactions, functions, and timed events; providing the dataflow program as input to a two-phase translation tool comprising a first-phase translation tool incorporating a matcher generator for translating program statements to corresponding matchers, data flow topologies, functions, and related symbolic components, and a second-phase translation tool for generating optimized platform-specific hardware instructions corresponding to the translated statements for execution on a hardware platform; and receiving the output of each phase of the translation tool.
20. The method or claim 1 wherein the timed events comprise at least one of intervals of time in which data are to be collected or discarded or specific points in time before or after which data are to be collected or discarded.