Benzinga earnings data

I am experimenting with the Benzinga earnings data and have several questions about it:
There are 4 date fields. Sometimes they are equal. Is there some documentation about each field? Is there some ordering between them, e.g. one field is the original date, and another is a revision to it which always comes later if any.
Which column is the essential in this data set? I thought it was the 'eps' column, but in the data page the description emphasized how the earnings date column is computed and manually checked.
There is also eps_est column. For which quarter is the estimate? Is it for the next quarter, or for the reported quarter, so an earnings surprise can be calculated as (eps-eps_est).
I do not think, that eps_est and eps come synchronously - so which is the newest data that leads to inserting of new row - is it always the eps, or it is sometimes the eps_est? How do I tell which of eps and eps_est is the event that the row documents?
What is the source of eps_est? Is it Wallstreet, or Benzinga or corporate forward guidance?
What's in eps_prior? Is it the eps of the preceding quarter - data does not confirm this.
The resultset of the notebook shows eps for quarters which have not yet elapsed. Is this an error, or these are there for the eps_est which is adjusted. What's in 'eps' column of such rows, and what's in eps_est?

Thank you

Hi Ph Quam,

Here's some documentation about the separate fields. We'll have a tutorial notebook up and running soon so you won't have to refer to this thread:

id - ID of  
updated - Last updated timestamp, UTC  
active - 1 = active item / 0 = delete or hide item (with field missing, assume 1)  
date - Date on Calendar, YYYYMMDD  
time - Time on Calendar, 24hr format  
ticker - Ticker Symbol (F, MSFT, etc...)  
exchange - Exchange (NYSE, NASDAQ, etc...)  
name - Name of Company  
period - Period (Q1,Q2...)  
period_year - Period Year  
eps - Adjusted EPS  
eps_est - Adjusted EPS Consensus Analyst Estimate  
eps_prior - Adjusted EPS from Prior Period  
revenue - Revenue  
revenue_est - Revenue Consensus Analyst Estimate  
importance -  0 ~ 5 Subjective Basis of How Important Event is to Market  
asof_date - Benzinga's timestamp of event capture.  
timestamp -  the datetime when Quantopian registered the data. For data loaded up via initial, historic loads, this timestamp is an estimate.

As for this question: The resultset of the notebook shows eps for quarters which have not yet elapsed. Is this an error, or these are there for the eps_est which is adjusted. Could you point me to where you're seeing this? Once I take a look, there's a good chance it's related to how the data is presented and what columns you're using to account for the dates.