How to understand the `on behalf of` in this sentence?

Solution 1:

Normally we use on behalf of when we speak about a representative of another person. Here it is used to describe an external process envoked to run on behalf of the program you are writing

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15568100/confused-when-boostasioio-service-run-method-blocks-unblocks/15575732#15575732

What Is Work? Work is some processing that Boost.Asio has been requested to do on behalf of the application code. Sometimes Boost.Asio may start some of the work as soon as it has been told about it, and other times it may wait to do the work at a later point in time. Once it has finished the work, Boost.Asio will inform the application by invoking the supplied handler.

The application needs to have some work done. It requests Boost.Asio to do this work.

Boost.Asio is performing this work and not the application code itself. So it is working on behalf of the application to make it easier to write the code.