  Introduction. The purpose of this work is the evaluation of responsiveness
when remote users communicate with a human-readable knowledge base (KB).
Responsiveness [R(s)] is considered here as a measure of service quality.
Method. The preferred method is operational analysis, a variation of classical
stochastic theory, which allows for the study of user-system interaction with
minimal computational effort. Analysis. The analysis is based on well-known
performance metrics, such as service ability, elapsed time, and throughput:
from these metrics estimates of R(s) are derived analytically. Results.
Critical points indicating congestion are obtained: these are limits on the
number of admissible requests and the number of connected users. Also obtained
is a sufficient condition for achieving flow balance between the KB host and
the request-relaying servers. Conclusions. When R(s) is within normal limits,
users should appreciate the benefits from using the services offered by their
KB host. When bottlenecks are formed, R(s) declines, and the whole
communication system heads for saturation. Flow balancing procedures are
necessary for the elimination of bottlenecks, which leads to a better resource
management.
