Revision as of 23:13, 21 February 2016 edit Nbarth (talk \| contribs) Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers 35,278 edits →History: ambiguity ← Previous edit		Revision as of 04:39, 29 February 2016 edit undo Nbarth (talk \| contribs) Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers 35,278 edits →Terminology: IBM Next edit →
Line 9: In the sense of "unit of work", in a job (meaning "one-off piece of work") a task can correspond to a single step (the step itself, not the execution thereof), while in [[batch processing]] individual tasks can correspond to a single step of processing a single item in a batch, or to a single step of processing all items in the batch. In online systems, tasks most commonly correspond to a single ''request'' (in [[request–response]] architectures) or a ''query'' (in [[information retrieval]]), either a single stage of handling, or the whole system-wide handling. ===IBM terminology=== [[IBM\|IBM's]] use of the term has been influential, though underlining the ambiguity of the term, in IBM terminology, "task" has dozens of specific meanings, including:<ref>IBM Terminology: [http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/terminology/t.html T]</ref> * A unit of work representing one of the steps in a process. * A unit of work to be accomplished by a device or process. * A process and the procedures that run the process. * A set of actions designed to achieve a particular result. A task is performed on a set of targets on a specific schedule. * A unit of computation. In a parallel job, two or more concurrent tasks work together through message passing. Although it is common to allocate one task per physical or logical processor, the terms "task" and "processor" are not interchangeable. * An activity that has business value, is initiated by a user, and is performed by software. In [[z/OS]] specifically, it is defined precisely as:<ref>[http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/zosbasics/com.ibm.zglossary.doc/zglossary.html Glossary of z/OS terms and abbreviations]: [http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/zosbasics/com.ibm.zglossary.doc/zglossary.html#t T]</ref> * In a multiprogramming or multiprocessing environment, one or more sequences of instructions treated by a control program as an element of work to be accomplished by a computer. ==History==

Task (computing): Difference between revisions