Patent ID: 8271983

Claim:
A computer program product comprising: a non-transitory computer recordable medium storing computer usable program code for scheduling submission of work units for execution on a data processing system, the computer program product comprising: first instructions for estimating a plurality of attributes for each work unit of a plurality of work units, each attribute of a work unit being indicative of a usage of a corresponding resource of the system by the work unit, wherein the plurality of attributes comprises a plurality of an attribute that represents processing power usage, an attribute that represents memory space occupation, an attribute that represents service unit consumption, an attribute that represents a number of tape mounts, an attribute that represents a number of input/output operations being executed, and an attribute that represents an amount of pages being printed; second instructions for combining the plurality of attributes of each work unit into a cumulative index, wherein the cumulative index is indicative of a total usage of resources of the system by the work unit, wherein the second instructions comprises: instructions for estimating a time duration of the work unit; instructions for dividing each of the plurality of attributes of the work unit by the estimated time duration of the work unit to form a plurality of rated attributes, wherein the plurality of rated attributes represent a distribution of the usage of the corresponding resource of the system by the work unit; and instructions for calculating the cumulative index according to the plurality of rated attributes, wherein the instructions for calculating the cumulative index according to the plurality of rated attributes, comprises: instructions for weighting each of the plurality of rated attributes according to a correction factor associated with the corresponding resource of the system, wherein the correction factor is retrieved from a tuning database that dynamically updates the correction factor; and instructions for summing the weighted attributes; third instructions for defining a plan of execution of the plurality of work units for optimizing a total usage of the resources of the system according to cumulative indexes of the plurality of work units; fourth instructions for verifying whether a sum of the cumulative indexes of work units of the plurality of work units to be executed concurrently according to the plan exceeds a first threshold value; fifth instructions for verifying for at least one selected resource of the resources of the system, whether a sum of the rated attributes of the work units to be executed concurrently according to the plan exceeds a second threshold value; and sixth instructions for submitting the plurality of work units of the plan to an administrator.