A resource is a source or supply from which benefit is produced. Typically resources are materials, energy, services, staff, knowledge, or other assets that are transformed to produce benefit and in the process may be consumed or made unavailable. Benefits of resource utilization may include increased wealth, meeting needs or wants, proper functioning of a system, or enhanced well being. From a human perspective a natural resource is anything obtained from the environment to satisfy human needs and wants.From a broader biological or ecological perspective a resource satisfies the needs of a living organism,Resources have three main characteristics: utility, limited availability, and potential for depletion or consumption. Resources have been variously categorized as biotic versus abiotic, renewable versus non-renewable, and potential versus actual, along with more elaborate classification.
A resource, or system resource, is any physical or virtual component of limited availability within a computer system. Every device connected to a computer system is a resource. Every internal system component is a resource. Virtual system resources include files (concretely file handles), network connections (concretely network sockets), and memory areas. Managing resources is referred to as resource management, and includes both preventing resource leaks (releasing a resource when a process has finished using it) and dealing with resource contention (when multiple processes wish to access a limited resource).
