When XES recognizes that contention exists, the responsibility for managing — and ultimately resolving — the contention is assigned to the contention exit of a connected user. The contention exit has as input the contention exit parameter list, the CEPL, mapped by the macro IXLYCEPL. The CEPL consists of a header area (mapped by CEPL) followed by a series of entries (mapped by CEPLENT), each of which represents a connector with an interest in the resource (in other words, an entry on the current resource request queue). The header information includes general status data about the resource and about this instance of contention. Each CEPLENT entry represents the current ownership state and any pending request to update that state, which has already been presented to the contention exit. Additionally, each CEPLENT entry contains a set of flags that allow the contention exit to inform XES as to what action, if any, should be performed for this owner and/or pending request represented by this entry.