In an embodiment, a method for distributing and processing streams over wide area networks comprises receiving, at a unified data processing node, a continuous query; determining a parallel portion of the continuous query; sending the parallel portion to a plurality of distributed data processing nodes located in a plurality of data centers; at each distributed node in the plurality of distributed nodes, locally executing the parallel portion against independent data partitions, producing a partial summary data, sending the partial summary data to the unified node; continuously receiving, at the unified node, in real-time, the partial summary data.