Process context

In computer science , especially in the design of operating systems , the process context is all information that is important for the flow and management of processes . Another meaning of the term in the context of business discussions is related to the context of business processes .

The context of processes in an operating system

To manage processes, an operating system must store information about the process. There are three types of context information:

1. The data of the process in the assigned address space is referred to as the user context .
2. The contents of the CPU registers (such as base and limit registers, command counting registers, accumulator, etc.) at the time the process is executed, as well as the page table , are considered as hardware context . This information must be saved if a process is interrupted by another process in the context of multitasking .
3. As a system context refers to information that the operating system in his view, stores about the process, for example, the process number opened by the process files, information about the parent or child processes, priorities, unused time, etc.

In the narrower sense, the hardware context and system context are seen as the actual process context. The information is managed by the operating system in the so-called process control block.

The context of processes of a business process

In order to execute processes, a company must provide information about the process, have it changed and supplemented, and store it. There are three types of context information:

The data of the business process in the assigned role of the user is referred to as the user context . The data of the business process for the processed order are referred to as the order context . The data of the business process in the work environment used is referred to as the work context .

Context control

The systematic restriction of access to data provides the options for securing business processes. This applies in particular to access in dialogue with support systems for the processing and use of company data , competition data and customer data . The aim is to protect against unauthorized reading and writing. By changing access rights depending on the current context, the security goals, for example according to the Common Criteria of the BSI, can be achieved particularly well. However, in the event of errors in the control, productivity is impaired and the acceptance of the support systems is damaged.

See also

• Process manager (computer)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Common Criteria ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.