Patent ID: 7441244

Claim:
A method of scheduling submission of work units for execution on a data processing system, comprising: 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; 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, and wherein combining the plurality of attributes of each work unit into the cumulative index comprises: estimating a time duration of the work unit; 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 calculating the cumulative index according to the plurality of rated attributes, wherein calculating the cumulative index according to the plurality of rated attributes, comprises: 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 summing the weighted attributes; 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; 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; 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 submitting the plurality of work units of the plan to an administrator.