REPLY TO 06/02/88 15:06 FROM [log in to unmask] "Revised LISTSERV forum":
Prototype User Directory Service for LISTSERV
 
Chuck, Mike,
 
As an MVS WYLBUR user let me suggest what I'd like to see added to
the LDBASE exec.
 
First, perhaps what we need is a new server name so that interactive
commands can be sent directly to it without LISTSERV having to
figure out that it is dealing with a situation where multiple inputs
may be expected.  Then the exec could essentially open a session
for each network user it receives something from and would apply any
addition commands against that session.  For those who like to be
good network citizens there should be something like a FINISH or
DONE command to close the session but there should also be an
installation settable timeout such that the session would be
discarded if no additional commands where received from the same
user within the timeout period.  I would think a 5 or 10 minute
period would be more than ample for interactive commands and I would
expect that sites which can only access servers via mail would
probably prefer to batch their request and iterate on a complete job
if it doesn't do quite what they expected.
Response time to interactive messages is usually sufficiently good
that I think this mechanism would look similar to a local session on
a slow machine and would avoid having to build jobs to get things
done if you can't run the LDBASE locally.
 
Another improvement, which I've suggested to Eric in the past but am
not aware of his having implemented yet, is for some protection
against retrieving too large a result.  I can't recall the details
any more but on one occasion I did something wrong when attempting
to subset the nodes file and got back the index records for every
node in the net, a rather large file as you might imagine.
 
 
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