{{short description|Characteristic of state of a computer system that outlives the process that created it}}
{{refimprove|date=September 2014}}
In [[computer science]], '''persistence''' refers to the characteristic of [[State (computer science)|state]] of a system that outlives (persists morefor longer than) the [[Process (computing)|process]] that created it. This is achieved in practice by storing the state as data in [[computer data storage]]. Programs have to transfer data to and from storage devices and have to provide mappings from the native [[Programming language|programming-language]] [[Data structure|data structures]] to the storage device data structures.<ref name="Conf1983">{{cite conference |url=http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/papers/download/ABC+83b.pdf |title=PS-algol: A Language for Persistent Programming |last1=Atkinson |first1=M.P. |last2=Bailey |first2=P.J. |last3=Chisholm |first3=K.J. |last4=Cockshott |first4=W.P. |author4-link=Paul Cockshott |last5=Morrison |first5=R. |author-link=Ron Morrison |year=1983 |page= |conference=10th Australian National Computer Conference |book-title=Proceedings 10th Australian National Computer Conference |___location=Melbourne, Australia |pages=70–79}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url = http://people.inf.ethz.ch/balzers/publications/contracted_persistent_object_programming.pdf|title = Contracted Persistent Object Programming|date = November 17, 2005|access-date = September 21, 2015|website = University of Glasgow - School of CS - Research|publisher = ETH Zürich|last = Balzer|first = Stephanie|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20061231214555/http://people.inf.ethz.ch/balzers/publications/contracted_persistent_object_programming.pdf|archive-date = December 31, 2006|url-status = dead}}</ref>
Picture editing programs or [[Word processor|word processors]], for example, achieve [[State (computer science)|state]] persistence by saving their documents to [[computer file|files]].
