process

An independent unit of operating system execution. It keeps track of the state of execution for a program. The operating system creates a process for each program being executed. It allocates resources needed by a program (memory, disk, CPU) to its process. The current process is the one which has been allocated use of the CPU. A 4GL application usually runs with two processes: the 4GL application (the front end) and a database engine (the back end).

See also application development tool, background process, database engine, foreground process, operating system, pipe, resources, shell.