States are used to describe relevant aspects in contexts and how the changes are to affect systems representations and behaviors.
On that account, events and states are complementary: the former are to notify relevant changes, the latter are to represent the partitions (²) that makes these changes relevant. Transitions are used to map the causes and effects of changes.
- State of physical objects.
- State of processes’ execution.
- State of actors’ expectations.
- State of symbolic representations.
Beside alignment with events, defining states consistently across objects, processes, and actors is to significantly enhance the traceability and transparency of architectures designs.