Using an HPC for remote access to diverse information services

During the sales call on the XX Company, Pat, the sales representative for Bosco Hot Air Balloons, was asked to demonstrate her new product. Pat requires an assistant for the demonstration,and she needs to check with her colleagues before committing to a date. She turns on the her Hand-held PC (HPC) which connects, via infrared link (see IrDA Futures later in this issue), to the XX Company LAN. Using the HPC, Pat accesses the corporate scheduler for both companies, requesting a free-time-search for herself, members of the demo team and Company XX executives. She is informed that one of the demo support team and all of the Company XX executives are available next Wednesday. She confirms that she is also available that day. She books the meeting on everyone's calendar. As a result, Pat can respond immediately to the request for demonstration, rather than "I'll get back to you on that."

Salutation Behind the Scenes

1. Salutation Protocol is independent of the transmission layers. Therefore it can be used within and across different transmission protocols. In the scenario, Salutation spans an infrared -> Company XX LAN -> Internet -> Bosco LAN network.

2. At the start of the scenario, Pat's HPC is foreign to the Company XX's LAN: both the brand of the HPC and Pat's authority to access the LAN. Salutation protocol is used to determine the capabilities of Pat's HPC, allowing tailoring of applications and services to the device. Salutation protocol also determines the end user profile for information access. Non-employees like Pat are granted limited access to scheduling data.

3. Salutation can do more than determine device characteristics. Pat's free time search request is made through Company XX's scheduler. Through Salutation dialogues between Pat's HPC and the XX Company scheduler, the URL of Pat's scheduler is determined. Using the Salutation capability exchange protocol, the Company XX's scheduler determines the capabilities of the Bosco company scheduler, setting up a negotiated session for Pat's free time search.

4. Since the Company XX scheduler and the Bosco company scheduler are different, no common query/exchange protocol is available. The Salutation message management and job control -- known as the Salutation Personality -- are used to communicate between the two schedulers.