It was a different time...
What I describe was when we used GUIs for clients, in client/server arrangements. We didn't have "sessions." Instead we had momentary connections between the client and server, to send/receive data. State was maintained during the connections, and then lost once the connection was closed, though a little state (about retrieved/updated records in the database) was maintained long-term on the server.
Some of our engineers had worked closely with the end users, both administrators and client users, to see how much responsibility they could exercise if something went wrong. I personally did not. That was something I begged my bosses about, but they only wanted to send senior engineers, to save money. I just took direction from them. My point was, from my perspective, that I *asked*, before going ahead with a messaging design, what the administrators and end users were capable of if something went wrong. Sometimes we had to step in to fix specific errors, because no one on their end was capable of handling it. At least that was the case in the short-term. Ultimately, they sent out their engineers to our office to find out how our software worked, so that they could take over full maintenance.
