STREAM

A stream is a body of flowing water that moves through a natural channel. In hydrology, streams are part of a watershed and connect sources of precipitation to downstream bodies such as rivers, lakes, and oceans. They transport water, sediment, and nutrients, and their flow varies with seasons and weather. Features such as riffles, pools, and floodplains influence habitat and ecological processes. Streams are classified by size, gradient, and flow regime, and they form networks that drain landscapes.

In computing, a stream is a sequence of data elements made available over time. Streams can be finite or unbounded and may represent input or output. They enable incremental processing and avoid reliance on whole-file operations. Common examples include I/O streams in programming languages, byte streams for files, and event streams in reactive systems. Buffering and encoding help manage speed differences between producers and consumers.

Streaming media refers to delivering audio or video content over a network so playback can begin before the entire file is transmitted. This is achieved with streaming protocols, codecs, and adaptive bitrate techniques. Services may use on‑demand streaming or live streaming, often supported by content delivery networks to reduce latency and buffering.

The term stream is also used in software design to describe continuous channels of data, such as logs or event streams, and in ecology to describe running bodies of water that require monitoring for water quality and habitat health. The word is commonly extended metaphorically to denote continuous output or progression.