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. To: [log in to unmask]