Resources can reflect real resources or they can be fictitious. The existence of real resources can be determined using Entire System Server features. For example you can examine the size of free space on any available disc, the presence of any cataloged data set or the actual number of running jobs.

Instead of this, resources are only meaningful within the Entire Operations system. An initial quantity of a resource can be defined in the system administration facility.

The user can use resources to further regulate the job flow.

For example, if a user defines a certain quantity of a resource as a prerequisite for a specific job, then this job will not run until this amount is available. The user could thus specify a combination of resources to define a certain job sequence within the job flow or prevent certain jobs from running in parallel.

For more information, see the section Resources in the User's Guide.