Automated Repair Service Bureau: The Context-Sensitive Switch of the LoopMaintenance Operations System

The Context-Sensitive Switch of the Loop Maintenance Operations System By J. P. HOLTMAN (Manuscript received June 5, 1981) In a distributed system where the data base is partitioned, e.g., on a geographical basis, incoming transactions must be routed to the correct computer based on information in the data. In some instances, this is performed manually by the attendant entering the data, but as the switching criteria becomes more complex and the transaction load increases, a mechanized system which could examine the data and route automatically would decrease the time required for an attendant to handle an individual input and, thereby, increase the productivity of the attendant. This paper describes the design and implementation of a "context-sensitive" switch that is used to route transactions in the Loop Maintenance Operations System. I. INTRODUCTION The Loop Maintenance Operations System (LMOS) 1 is a hierarchical network composed of a host computer2 which is a large data base machine, and a number of transaction processing front-end (FE) computers.3 The entire data base is contained on the host computer, but this data is distributed to each of the FE computers based on the geography of the system. The geographical boundaries that are defined by an FE are those areas served by a Repair Service Bureau (RSB). Since an RSB typically is associated with several wire centers, the customer lines that are served by that bureau correspond to the geographical area served by those wire centers.