System and method for controlling the execution of remotely originating tasks on a local workstation

Systems and methods by which a workstation local user connected to a distributed computing environment network can selectively control the computational resources of a multi-tasking workstation. Network assigned tasks defined by process group protocol are linked to a batch process system daemon task. The batch process system daemon communicates through shared memory, using state variables, to a user monitor task executing on the local workstation. User initiated control operations are entered into the user monitor task and linked back by state variable through workstation shared memory to the batch process system daemon. In another form, the network assigned tasks are cooperatively configured to directly read and write the state variables in shared memory.