1. A method comprising: capturing a stream of operational events; and materializing, by an activity monitoring computer system, a resulting view, wherein the resulting view comprises a dynamically defined view of the stream of operational events, wherein the materializing of the resulting view comprises: forming a row for at least one event in the stream of operational events; capturing a context that comprises data relevant to the at least one event; and joining the context with the row to form a compound row within the resulting view; and when a business rule applied to the resulting view holds true, outputting a reportlet corresponding to an alert that is based at least in part on the business rule.
9. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the materializing the resulting view comprises: formatting the resulting view as a plurality of compound rows that each contain contextual data joined with event data; and outputting the view to a rule engine.