Network access technology - A perspective

The utility of computer networking is widely accepted, as is the complexity of accessing network resources and services. This complexity must be reduced to support more effective user access to and utilization of these resources as discussed in References 1 through 3. Accomplishing this reduction across heterogeneous systems is a primary objective of network access support. Specific capabilities which have currently been shown to be feasible include: "macros" which permit the user to invoke via a single directive a complex of individual system and/or communications subnetwork commands which collectively accomplish a specific and common function such as "login;"4,5 common command languages for file manipulation and network job execution across a heterogeneous collection of systems;6 "soft" user interfaces providing command completion, spelling correction, and, potentially, correction of minor syntactic errors;4,7,8 uniform interfaces to similar services existing on diverse systems such as bibliographic retrieval services;9,lo and the emergent area of "intelligent assistance." 5 Currently, there are several ongoing projects providing varying degrees and types of network access support for the interactive user-the population of interest in this paper. Appreciating the functions provided by these efforts and determining additional functions necessary to maximize access support requires establishment of a basic perspective on network access. The global objective of this paper is to provide such a perspective. This will be accomplished through: (i) identifying related research efforts; (ii) identifying problems inhibiting network access support development for the appropriate user categories; and (iii) structuring and discussing the major components of such support. One of the key components of this structure, expert assistance, shields the user from the requirement of learning yet another language-that of the access system. Expert assistance eliminates the requirement that the user become an 'expert' on