What is an Event Log?

An event log is a chronological record of events in which each entry contains at least a case ID, an activity, and a timestamp. It is the classic input format for traditional Process Mining.

Why does this matter?

Creating event logs is labor-intensive and forces complex, multidimensional processes into a single case perspective – a major bottleneck of classic approaches. Modern methods therefore work directly on relational databases or graphs and require no pre-built event log.

What does this look like in practice?

Three rows from an order-to-cash log: (case 4711, "order created", 2 Mar 09:14), (case 4711, "credit check", 2 Mar 11:02), (case 4711, "delivery", 5 Mar 08:30). That is all process mining needs to reconstruct a path. Extra columns such as handler, amount or plant make the analysis richer but are not required.

Not to be confused with

Not to be confused with an application or system log, which records technical events with no case reference. Nor with a database table: that shows an object's current state, whereas the event log holds the history of how it got there.