Service Levels: A Concept for the User and the Computer Center

levels represent an important concept that can be applied toward the solution of dificult problems surrounding communications between users and providers of data processing services. In this paper, this concept is described in terms of the architecture, which defines the scope and structure of service information. The paper further translates the architecture into data processing terminology by presenting the database structure and data elements related to service levels. The paper also addresses the post-processing of the data base, a step essential to properly communicating service-level information. In the past decade, engineers, programmers, and administra-tivelmanufacturing people have become increasingly dependent on data processing to perform their work. The manner in which computers are used has also changed. In addition to the typical batch service offering, where a user's job is sequentially processed to completion in an input, process, output sequence, a variety of interactive service offerings have been developed. What is common to such functionally different but terminal-oriented service offerings as, for example, APL-sV, os/Time Sharing Option (TSO), and Virtual Machine Facility/370 (VM/370), is the direct extension of the basic data processing function into the user's working environment. One significant result has been increased awareness by the users of the available data processing services and the measures of service upon which they can rely. The type of service offering selected determines the manner in which the workload is processed. Without elaborating on the global benefits of interactive processing versus batch processing, the contrast between these two data processing methods is presented from the viewpoint of how the user goes about obtaining the service and his relationship with the computer center.