jobstatus

JobStatus is a label used to describe the current state of a task or job within a software system, workflow engine, or batch processing environment. It is typically stored as a field on a job record and updated as work progresses. The concept also appears in contexts such as print queues, cloud task runners, and data pipelines, where tracking the lifecycle of a unit of work helps coordinate resources and provide feedback to users.

Most systems define a finite set of states. Common ones include PENDING or QUEUED (waiting for resources), RUNNING (in progress), SUCCEEDED or COMPLETED (finished successfully), FAILED or ERROR (made an unsuccessful attempt), CANCELED (intentionally stopped by a user or administrator), and TIMED_OUT or ABORTED (stopped due to time constraints or a fatal condition). Some implementations add RETRYING, SUSPENDED, or UNKNOWN.

Lifecycle and transitions tend to be event-driven: a job moves from PENDING to QUEUED, then to RUNNING, and finally to a terminal state such as COMPLETED or FAILED. Transitions may be accompanied by timestamps, error messages, and metadata such as duration or resource usage. In practice, JobStatus informs scheduling policies, retry logic, alerting, and user interfaces, and is often exposed through APIs and logs as a string or enumerated type.

Related concepts include job scheduling, task status, and workflow state machines.