and in other instances user intervention is relied upon to identify the available system resources fig2 depicts a flowchart 200 of an exemplary method for policy based storage resource management within the exemplary environment of fig1 in accordance with the principles of the present invention according to the flowchart 200 a users is able to provide input regarding data storage policies afterwards this input is then processed by the system application 104 as known to one of ordinary skill a user interface is provided to a user to simplify both the selection of data storage objects and the specification of policies to apply to those objects typical interface elements such as radio buttons text entry boxes drop down menus etc permit the user to specify matching criteria for data objects from among existing legacy data with varying level of details for example the user may wish to query for data objects by their type such as for example jpeg files dbx files doc files etc in addition or alternatively the user may specify data objects according to the software application that utilizes them for example the user may desire to specify all files that are used by sap u2122 or some other application other levels of detail for identifying data objects are expressly contemplated within the scope of the present invention as an.