Jobs can gain priority if they are held by locks.

If a job enters the long wait state as a result of something other than a lock conflict, it is normally placed behind all other jobs of equal priority already in the ineligible queue. A queue of this type is called a "first-in, first-out priority queue".

If a job becomes ineligible after a short wait extended or long wait caused by a lock conflict, it is placed in front of jobs of equal priority already in the queue.

The most common causes of this change to the normal queue placement are:

• A job entered a long wait as a result of a lock conflict because it was active before the conflict occurred. If the wait was short, you may be able to get the job back into an activity level before all the objects the job was using are removed from main storage.

• When a job has been granted a lock, it leaves the wait state. If other jobs in the ineligible queue are to use the same object, they must wait until the object is once again available. Therefore, you want jobs holding locks on objects to use them and make them available for other jobs to use. To accomplish this, the job moves ahead of any potential requesters.