Resource scheduling

It has been apparent to the authors that a new generation of software writers is attempting to re-invent the wheel so far as the allocation of resources is concerned. This paper is intended to give an outline of the history and development of this field and a review of the basic techniques that have been implemented. In order to assist the general reader to realise some of the reasoning that went into the derivations of these schedulers it is necessary to give a brief history of the commercial packages which were the foundation of this topic. The second part of the paper describes the design of the basic procedures without the frills that accompanied them in the generally available products.