How variable names are handled

Variable names refer to values that are not part of an expression but are accessed while evaluating the expression.

When used to select a resource, the variable name is a persistent attribute. When used to generate an event, the variable name is usually a dynamic attribute, but may be a persistent attribute. When used to select audit records, the variable name is the name of a field within the audit record.

A variable name is restricted to include only 7-bit ASCII characters that are alphanumeric (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) or the underscore character (_). The name must begin with an alphabetic character.

When the expression is used by the RMC subsystem for an event or a rearm event, the name can have a suffix that is the '@' character followed by 'P', which refers to RMC's previous observation of the attribute value. Because RMC observes attribute values periodically and keeps track of the previously observed value, you can use this syntax to compare the currently observed value with the previously observed value. For example, the following event expression would trigger an event if the average number of processes on the run queue has increased by 50% or more between observations:
(ProcRunQueue - ProcRunQueue@P) >= (ProcRunQueue@P * 0.5)