31. An industrial system or the like comprising: apparatus for implementing system operations; sensor means associated with the apparatus for generating signals indicative of the state of the system; a digital computer system having a memory; signal scanning means associated with said computer system and connecting to said sensor means for scanning said sensor signals periodically and including means for transferring a digital record of the status of the signals into the memory of said digital computer system; at least one machine readable signal-related event definition defining as an event a change in the state of at least one sensor signal which definition includes a designation which serves both as a name for the defined event and as a name for the signal; at least one machine readable job definition including at least one triggering reference to a designation which serves as a name for an event and for a signal and which is at least one event definition; loader means for operating said computer system to accept said event and job definitions and to store said definitions in said memory; trigger-connect means for operating said computer system to link job definitions but only those containing trigger references to designations, to locations in said memory that are in turn linked to the event definition and status data for the designated signals; and means for operating said computer system to respond to the occurrence of a signal-related event by initiating execution of any and all job definitions which are linked to the status data and definition corresponding to that event.
31. An industrial system or the like comprising: apparatus for implementing system operations; sensor means associated with the apparatus for generating signals indicative of the state of the system; a digital computer system having a memory; signal scanning means associated with said computer system and connecting to said sensor means for scanning said sensor signals periodically and including means for transferring a digital record of the status of the signals into the memory of said digital computer system; at least one machine readable signal-related event definition defining as an event a change in the state of at least one sensor signal which definition includes a designation which serves both as a name for the defined event and as a name for the signal; at least one machine readable job definition including at least one triggering reference to a designation which serves as a name for an event and for a signal and which is at least one event definition; loader means for operating said computer system to accept said event and job definitions and to store said definitions in said memory; trigger-connect means for operating said computer system to link job definitions but only those containing trigger references to designations, to locations in said memory that are in turn linked to the event definition and status data for the designated signals; and means for operating said computer system to respond to the occurrence of a signal-related event by initiating execution of any and all job definitions which are linked to the status data and definition corresponding to that event. 32. A system in accordance with claim 31 wherein at least one event definition contains a designator for an internal variable that is stored within the computer system memory and that does not correspond to a sensor-generated signal.