NASA/RECON, the predecessor of DIALOG System, was originally designed as a user friendly system for astronauts, so that they should not miss-operate the machine in spite of tension in the outer space. Since then, DIALOG has endeavoured to develop a series of user friendly systems, such as knowledge index, inbound gateway, as well as Version II. In this so-called end user searching era, DIALOG has released a series of front end systems successively; DIALOG Business Connection, DIALOG Medical Connection and OneSearch in 1986, early and late 1987 respectively. They are all called expert systems. In this paper, the features of each system are described in some detail and the remaining critical issues are also discussed.
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