JPH04287151A - Process control method for computer system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To shorten time for presenting computer resources for terminal service by canceling connection with a terminal each time one request from the terminal is processed. CONSTITUTION:A process is generated by a command 6 from the terminal and according to this command 6, a retrieval operation and data transmission are executed. In the case of this data transmission, however, process control information required for restart the process of processing the command 6 is transmitted together to the terminal, and the process is completed. When outputting the next command 6 from the terminal, this process information is transmitted together so as to reproduce this process.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a process control method for a computer system connected to a plurality of terminals.

0002

[Prior Art] A personal computer or the like is used as a terminal and connected to a computer system via a line or the like, and e-mail,
In electronic communication systems that implement functions such as electronic conferences or database searches, input from a terminal is often slow and discrete compared to the processing power of a computer. For example, after sending data for one electronic conference to a terminal, it takes a long time to read and understand the sent data until the terminal requests the next data.

As shown in FIG. 6, a conventional process control system in a computer system includes a process management table 3 that manages all processes on the computer system in the main memory 1, and processes linked to this process management table 3. Main memory 1 where table 4 is the substance of the process
The state of the process 5 above or the process 5 saved in the auxiliary storage device 2 is managed. When the process 5 is not currently running, even if it is saved in the auxiliary storage device 2, it is always managed in an operable state on this computer system.

The flow of state changes in a request from a terminal in an electronic communication system and a process that processes this request in a computer system is as shown in FIG.
In the case of a database search command, one search command causes a process on the computer to perform a search operation, and among the search results, data that can be displayed on one screen of the terminal is transmitted. The terminal displays the received data, and the user of the terminal reads the displayed data and waits for the next search request or request to transmit remaining data. During this time, the computer system performs chronological processing during the period in which the process performs search and data transmission processing (A1), the period in which it waits for input (B1), and the period in which the next search or data transfer processing is performed (A2). Waiting time (B) compared to time (A1)
1) kept the process operational even though it took a long time.

[0005]

[Problem to be Solved by the Invention] In a computer system, data is transmitted in response to one processing request in this way, and while the next request is accepted, a process that processes the request is generated and maintained in an input waiting state. Therefore, in a system that connects many terminals, even though there are very few processes running at the same time,
There is a problem in that a large amount of resources are consumed in order to manage processes generated in response to a large number of terminals.

[0006] Due to the above-mentioned problem, in billing for electronic communication systems, billing is generally done for the time a terminal is connected, even though the actual processing time is short. The problem was that it was expensive. In particular, the above-mentioned billing problem is that the communication costs incurred when terminals are connected via telephone lines are not as high as the connection time compared to the case where the charges are based on the amount of data regardless of the connection time due to the use of a packet communication network. There is a problem in that the longer it takes, the greater the discrepancy between the cost required for communication and the fee for using the computer system, and the more dissatisfied the users become.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and reduces the time required to disconnect from the terminal and provide computer resources for terminal services each time one request from the terminal is processed. The purpose of this paper is to provide a process control method for computer systems that reduces the time required.

[0008]

[Means for Solving the Problem] In a process control method for a computer system that processes requests from multiple terminals and transmits the processing results to the requesting terminal, this The process used for processing is returned with the information necessary for the terminal to restore it in the next request, and this process is terminated, and the next time the terminal requests processing, it is necessary to restore the process. By attaching the necessary information, the finished process can be restarted.

[0009] Also, the necessary information is code information that identifies processing necessary to restore the state of the used process.

[0010] Furthermore, in a process control method for a computer system that processes requests from multiple terminals and transmits the processing results to the requesting terminal, when returning the data that has been processed in response to the requests from the terminals, the Control information necessary for restarting processing of a process configured by a reentrant program is attached and returned, and an area for this control information is released. Further, the control information is an identification code that identifies information necessary to restart processing of the process.

[0011]

[Operation] The operating principle of the process control system according to the present invention will be explained with reference to FIG. A search request from a terminal generates a process using command 6, and performs a search operation and data transmission corresponding to command 6. In this data transfer, process control information 8 necessary for restarting the process that processed this command 6 is also transmitted to the terminal in addition to the data, and this process is terminated. At the terminal, the computer system displays the sent data and then sends the process control information 8 sent from the computer system in addition to the command 6 requesting retrieval or transmission of remaining data. At the same time, the state of the process at the time of previous termination (A11) is restored, and processing of command 6 is started as if the process had existed without termination (A12).
.

[0012] In general, processing in electronic communication is partially dependent on the type of service such as e-mail, electronic conferences, and databases, but processing requires pointers that point to data stored in a computer system and operation requests for this data. In most cases, it can be processed if the type of the data is known, and even if it is not, it can be processed with only a small amount of accompanying data. By transmitting this pointer, operation request, and accompanying data, it is possible to Since it is easy to resume processing from the state where it was interrupted, it is possible to maintain a state in which the amount of data due to the addition of control data does not become much larger than the amount of data transmitted between the terminal and the computer system. Therefore, the cost of transmitting control data to the terminal and from the terminal to restart the process is small compared to the cost of keeping the process in operation during this process. .

[0013] Also, when using a process composed of a reentrant program, the control information necessary to restart the processing of this process is stored by attaching it to the processing data and sending it back. Since the memory area of the computer system can be released, the memory area of the computer system can be used effectively. In this case, if the control information is an identification code that identifies information necessary to restart the process, the amount of transmission to and from the terminal will be reduced.

[0014]

Embodiments Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of the process control section according to the first embodiment of the present invention. The input interface 11 receives a processing request from a terminal, and passes the received processing request to the data/process control information separation circuit 12. The data/process control information separation circuit 12 separates data corresponding to a request from a terminal according to the conventional method and process control information according to this embodiment. Note that when the terminal is first connected to the computer system, information indicating that the process control information does not exist or is empty is stored. The process generation circuit 13 generates a process on the computer system to process a request from a terminal. The process generation circuit 13 also controls the process table generation circuit 14 to generate a process table 16 from the process control information.

An example of process control information is shown in FIG. The process name indicates the name of the process that was executing the process from the terminal at the time of the last data transmission from the computer system, and the entry name indicates the entrance of the process for restarting the process. The link data name and data pointer indicate the data to be processed and the pointer for reading or writing the data. The control data is information for controlling the execution of accompanying processes depending on the type of processing, and includes a small amount of information such as a read/write distinction and a pointer indicating the position of a character to be edited in an editor.

Generally, in order to suspend the execution of a process on a computer system and restart the suspended process,
In addition to the name that identifies this process, it requires a large amount of information such as the computer system's registers, stack, and various management tables, which maintains the process in an executable state on the computer system until the process finishes processing. This is why it has to be done. In the electronic communication system that is the object of the present invention, as explained above, the information necessary to restart the process is extremely small, so the information necessary for restarting the process is sent to the terminal, and the sent information is reused Once received, the process can be terminated.

The data/process control information synthesis circuit 17 synthesizes the data to be sent to the terminal and the process control information according to this embodiment. Process control information is process generation circuit 1
3 converts the process table 16 into the format shown in FIG. 3 as an example. Data and process control information are transmitted to the terminal via output interface 18. Upon transmission of this data, the process that was processing the request from the terminal ends.

Next, a second embodiment will be explained. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the configuration of a process control section according to a second embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, instead of the process control information in the first embodiment, code information for identifying processing necessary to restore the state of the process is transmitted. The process control information separated by the data/process control information separation circuit 12 is a code that identifies the processing required to restore the process, and the process table generation circuit 14 searches the control code table 19 based on this identification code, A process table 16 is generated. The control code generation circuit 20 selects the code of the control code table 19 from the process table 16 and sends it to the data/process control information synthesis circuit 17. According to this embodiment, it is possible to reduce the amount of information transmitted between the terminal and the computer system in order to restore the state of the process, so there is an effect that the time and cost required for communication can be reduced.

Next, a third embodiment will be explained. FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the configuration of a process control section according to a third embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, instead of repeatedly creating and terminating a process on a computer system, the process is configured as a reentrant program, and control data regarding each terminal request processed by this program is generated in a separate area. It is something. In electronic communication systems, requests from terminals can often be processed by the same type of program, and by configuring reentrant programs, the main memory of the computer system and
It becomes possible to save resources such as auxiliary memory.

[0020] A reentrant program is a program that is created so that multiple processes can share and execute one program. For example, process A executes program P.
If the process is interrupted during execution, and process B executes the process of program P, if the program is reentrant, it will operate normally when process A resumes the process. In order to enable reentrancy, it is necessary to secure control data and a work area specific to each process separately from the program for each process, and this area is the control data/work area 23 described later.
It is.

Using the process control information separated by the data/process control information separation circuit 12, the individual area generation circuit 22 creates individual control data/work areas necessary for processing this process in the control data/work area 23. generate. The control data is the information illustrated in FIG. The individual area generation circuit 22 is a process-individual control data/work area in the control data/work area 23, and includes data set names, record addresses, etc. when searching a database, for example. The reason for each process is that multiple processes share one program. For example, if you store the record address in a variable called RECN,
When processing of process A is interrupted and processing of process B is executed, there is a possibility that RECN will be rewritten during processing of process B. Therefore, by maintaining a data area for each process, programs and data can be To separate.

The entrance control circuit 21 determines the entrance of a program that executes a process and passes control to this program. The above entrance is found from the entrance name shown in FIG. Regarding data transmission, the control information is separated from the control data/work area 23 by the control information separation circuit 24, and the
The process control information synthesis circuit 17 synthesizes data to be transmitted to the terminal. Since the control data/work area 23 includes control data and work areas for many terminal request processing processes, the control information separation circuit 24 separates the work area for the corresponding process from among the control data/work areas 23 and separates only the control data. Perform processing to extract. For example, in the case of a database search, the information includes a process name, data set name, record address, etc.

Note that even when process control information is encoded as described in the second embodiment, it can be realized in a similar manner by using the control code table 19 shown in FIG.

In this embodiment, the main memory and auxiliary memory resources are saved because the program area can be shared by processes. In PC communication and database search systems, many processes are generated to process requests from many terminals at the same time, but the processing is not all different for each process, so by using the same program, the central computer The number of programs placed in main memory can be significantly reduced compared to the number of processes.

[0025]

[Effects of the Invention] As is clear from the above explanation, the present invention reduces the number of processes by returning process restoration information to the terminal together with data for each processing request from the terminal, so that the process is Since it is only necessary to enable the process to operate and communicate with the terminal for only a certain period of time, it is possible to reduce the consumption of resources on the computer system and to reduce communication charges.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the principle operation of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of process control information.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a process management system.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing the flow of process state changes in database search in the process management system.

[Description of symbols] 11 Input interface 12 Data/process control information separation circuit 13 Process generation circuit 14 Process table generation circuit 15 Process 16 Process table 17 Data/process control information synthesis circuit 18 Output interface 19 Control code table 20 Control code generation circuit 21 Entrance control circuit 22 Individual area generation circuit 23 Control data/work area 24 Control information separation circuit

Claims (4)

[Claims] [Claim 1] In a process control method for a computer system that processes requests from multiple terminals and transmits the processing results to the requesting terminal, when returning the data that has been processed in response to the requests from the terminals, the The terminal returns the process with the information necessary to restore it in the next request, terminates this process, and the next time the terminal requests processing, it sends the information necessary to restore the process. A process control method for a computer system, characterized in that by attaching an attachment, it is possible to restart the terminated process. 2. The process control method for a computer system according to claim 1, wherein the necessary information is code information that identifies processing necessary to restore the state of the used process. [Claim 3] In a process control method for a computer system that processes requests from multiple terminals and transmits the processing results to the requesting terminal, when returning data that has been processed in response to a request from a terminal, the A process control method for a computer system, characterized in that control information necessary for restarting processing of a process configured by a reentrant program is returned with attachment, and an area for this control information is released. . 4. The process control method for a computer system according to claim 3, wherein the control information is an identification code that identifies information necessary to restore processing of the process.