The Wolfram Language provides frameworks for performing computations in the background, either immediately or on a predetermined schedule. These frameworks operate both locally and in the cloud, and can spawn additional processes or can operate preemptively in a single process.

Submitting Tasks

SessionSubmit — submit a task to be executed in the current session

LocalSubmit — submit a task to be executed in a separate local process

CloudSubmit — submit a task to be executed in the cloud

Task Scheduling

ScheduledTask — represent a task to perform at a scheduled time or periodically

ContinuousTask — a task to be continuously reevaluated

Task Event Handling

HandlerFunctions — functions to execute when particular task events occur

HandlerFunctionsKeys — what information should be passed to handler functions

Task Representation

TaskObject — symbolic representation of a task

$CurrentTask — the task being handled by a handler function

Task Control

Tasks — a list of all submitted tasks

TaskSuspend  ▪  TaskResume  ▪  TaskAbort  ▪  TaskRemove

TaskExecute — immediately execute the action of a scheduled task

TaskWait — wait for a task to be completely finished

Background External Tasks

URLSubmit — submit an HTTP request for asynchronous execution

URLDownloadSubmit — submits an HTTP request for asynchronous download

DeviceExecuteAsynchronous — submit a command to a device

Fire-and-Forget Cloud Tasks

CloudDeploy — deploy a scheduled task without generating a task object

DocumentGenerator — automated document generator to deploy in the cloud

External Processes

StartProcess — start a separately running external process

LinkReadyQ — check whether data is ready to read from a WSTP connection

Blocking External Operations

DeviceExecute  ▪  ServiceExecute

RemoteEvaluate  ▪  LocalEvaluate  ▪  ParallelEvaluate  ▪  CloudEvaluate

External Message Operations »

SendMail  ▪  SendMessage  ▪  ...