Process & Session
Process & Session
Smalltalk processes with their respective transaction trees are shown in the Control Panel as named sessions, and may be suspended and resumed from there, as well as by program (as may all Control Panel functions), or may be terminated in the event that, for example, a background process is in an infinite loop and otherwise unstoppable. When a process is terminated its Top transaction is rolled back, including therefore all its sub-transactions.
The concept of user-interface session as distinct from its process has the additional benefit of insulating its transactions from the frequently-changing identity of the user-interface process during dialogs or debugging. When a user-interface session is suspended a new one is created and this may proceed independently, however locks held by any open transactions under the suspended process will block access to those objects until the suspended session is resumed and its transactions committed or rolled back.
