Difference between event, alert, problem, and incident

[Bill Smith2]

Hello All,

What is the difference between events, alerts, incidents and problems in ServiceNow world?

What is the relationship between an alert and an incident?

Is an incident synonymous with a ticket in ServiceNow?

How do I create an alert/event in ServiceNow?

Do I/can I store an alert in the incident table?

I am really confused about all these concepts in context of ServiceNow and reading the documentation doesn't seem to help much.

My external system generates a set of alerts and I'd like to be able to generate tickets for them in ServiceNow based on some logic. How do I do that?

Your replies/clarification is much appreciated.

thanks.

[Bill Smith2]

Thanks Himanshu and Monali.

I do not have the option of entering alerts manually. Say if a device goes down, I receive an alert from the external system. How do I insert these alerts into ServiceNow via the REST API POST and how do I auto-generate tickets/incidents from these alerts? In other words,

1)Is there a table for inserting alerts from an external source?

2)Is there a REST API for inserting alerts?

3) How do I link alerts to incidents? In other words, how do I create tickets for some alerts based on some criteria, automatically, or programmatically? 

4)It seems to me incident alerts are for generating notifications when an incident is created. So, it seems that it is the opposite of what I am trying to do.

5)What's the role of imp_notification in relation to alerts and incidents?

thank you.