Denning provides a rough definition for a working set in Section 2:
Roughly speaking, a working set of pages is the minimum
collection of pages that must be loaded in main memory for
a process to operate efficiently, without "unnecessary" page
faults.
And provides the precise definition in Section 3:
We define the working set of information W(t, r)
of a
process at time t
to be the collection of information referenced by the process during the process time interval (t - r, t)
.
Thus, the information a process has referenced during
the last r
seconds of its execution constitutes its working
set (Figure 2).
The term "page" in these definitions refers to physical pages, not virtual pages. That's because only those physical pages that have resided in main memory at least once during that period of time are part of the working set of a process.
is the Working Set a completely different, separate list derived from
the page table entries, or is it defined in the page table entries?
The working set is not defined by the page table entries. These entries define the whole virtual address space of the process. Also, by only looking at the page table entires, it's not possible to determine or derive the working set. The pages that are resident in main memory in a particular period of time and that have been accessed by the process in that period constitute the working set for that period.
Even if a page table entry includes an accessed bit (like the x86 page table entries) and even if the OS supports the accessed bits, it's still not possible to determine the working set just by looking at the page table entries. That's because the same page table entry may point to multiple physical pages during a period of time. At the end of that period, there is no way to determine all of the physical pages that any page table entry has defined during that period. So some additional data structures need to be used.