ressourcen

Resources

In short: In a web or system context, anything that can be addressed via an address (e.g. a URL) or provided by a system — files, data, but also hardware capacity like CPU or RAM.

In more detail: On the web, a resource is typically an object addressable via a URL (an HTML page, an image, an API response). In a system context, by contrast, “resources” means limited capacities like main memory, processor time, or network bandwidth, whose management is, for example, the operating system’s job.

In Depth

The resource concept is central to REST APIs: instead of naming actions (getUser, deleteUser), REST addresses resources via URLs and expresses the action via the HTTP method (GET /users/42 reads, DELETE /users/42 deletes the same resource). Every resource ideally has a unique, stable address, regardless of how its content changes over time.

In a system context (“system resources”), the meaning is different: here, resources are limited, shared capacities whose allocation the operating system has to coordinate:

• CPU time: how many computing steps a process gets per unit of time.
• Main memory: how much memory a process is allowed to occupy.
• File handles/sockets: how many simultaneously open files/network connections a process is allowed to hold.
• Network bandwidth: how much data throughput is available to a process/container.

If an application runs out of these resources (e.g. memory full), the system reacts differently depending on the resource type — from slowdown to forcibly terminating the process (the “out of memory killer” on Linux).

See also: URL