[/
 / Copyright (c) 2003-2024 Christopher M. Kohlhoff (chris at kohlhoff dot com)
 /
 / Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying
 / file LICENSE_1_0.txt or copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
 /]

[section:async_agents Asynchronous Agents]

[$async_agent_model.png [width 931px]]

An ['asynchronous agent] is a sequential composition of asynchronous
operations. Every asynchronous operation is considered to run as a part of an
asynchronous agent, even if that agent contains only that single operation. An
asynchronous agent is an entity that may perform work concurrently with other
agents. Asynchronous agents are to asynchronous operations as threads are to
synchronous operations.

However, an asynchronous agent is a purely notional construct that allows us to
reason about the context for, and composition of, asynchronous operations in a
program. The name “asynchronous agent” does not appear in the library, nor is
it important which concrete mechanism[footnote Such as chains of lambdas,
coroutines, fibers, state machines, etc.] is used to compose the asynchronous
operations in an agent.

We can visualise an asynchronous agent as follows:
 
[$async_agent_chain.png [width 738px]]

Asynchronous agents alternately wait for an asynchronous operation to complete,
and then run a completion handler for that operation. Within the context of an
agent, these completion handlers represent indivisible units of schedulable
work.

[endsect]
