The "Resources" page appears in the properties notebooks of all executable files to display additional information about the executable module.

Resources are read-only data objects that can be accessed dynamically at run time.

Resource objects are placed into an executable file by the Resource Compiler (RC.EXE), which ships with &os2;. This can either be the application's main module (.EXE file) or a dynamic link library (DLL).

A resource can be loaded at any time by using a "type" and "ID" pair. Typically, as opposed to the actual application code, resources are only loaded when they are actually needed. This makes application startup faster and also reduces memory consumption.

Resources are frequently used by applications to separate their national language support (NLS) from the actual code. This way, applications can be translated without having to recompile the source code. (&xwp; does its language support this way, for example.)

The following types of resources exist: