Persistence is quite a common term used in the English Language. It is used to refer to a quality or trait .That is someone who consistently strives to do something in order to achieve a particular goal or task. And in most cases this attribute is said to stand in good stead. The field of Computer Science and Operating Systems also has something called as Persistence. Whether the meaning of persistence in Computer Science is similar to that of the English Language remains to be seen.
In Computer Science, persistence means a resource which exceeds it’s normal/original life term and continues to exist in the system. An example for such kind of resources would be, the resources which exist in the Hard Disk of the Operating System. As you would all know, the contents residing in the hard disk or the secondary storage memory are non volatile and continue to “exist” even after the computer or the system is turned off. This shows that the resource is “persistent” to stay alive and not go away after it is turned off.
Ricky Raghavan 