ECA rules were developed as an optimization of condition action rules. The performance of rule evaluation was improved by allowing, or even requiring, explicit definition of when rules should be triggered in the form of events. For example, (ON
update
A
followed_by
update
B
IF
A = 5∧ B = 3 DO action) is a rule specification that is triggered by the explicit event update
A
followed_by
update
B
(i.e., a sequence of updates).