Job control (computing): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:23, 17 January 2008

Revision as of 01:39, 18 January 2008

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Job control has developed from the early days of computers where human [[Computer operator|operators]] were responsible for setting up, monitoring and controlling every job, to modern [[operating system]]s which take on the bulk of the work of job control.

Even with a highly sophisticated scheduling system, some human intervention is desirable. Modern systems permit jobstheir users to be stoppedstop and resumedresume jobs, to beexecute executedthem in the foreground (with the ability to interact with the user) or in the background. See for instance [[Job control (Unix)]].

==History==

It became obvious to the early computer developers that their fast machines spent most of the time idle because the single program they were executing had to wait while a slow [[peripheral]] device completed an essential operation such as reading or writing data. [[Data buffer|Buffering]] only provided a partial solution; eventually an output buffer would occupy all available memory or an input buffer would be emptied by the program, and the system would be forced to halt.