provide appropriate functionality to satisfy the request a search is made for the dynamic link library file or an updated version thereof a search might for example be made to find files on a server located at another location on a network further embodiments of the invention which operate in a similar manner to the embodiment of fig1 and can incorporate the same components and architecture are hereinafter provided with reference to fig3 5 a second embodiment of the invention is implemented in a command shell environment as shown in fig3 a in a traditional command line shell 24 stored in memory 22 on a computer 21 e g the unix bourne shell or command com in ms dos a request is composed by a client as a line of text issued directly by a user read from a script or issued by an executable component on the system which might have spawned the shell instance the shell command interpreter 26 in this instance acts as the server and the typical request is execution of a program 25 stored in long term storage 29 optionally with command line parameters the command interpreter has a certain vocabulary of requests that it understands this vocabulary consists of a group of internally implemented commands and externally available programs usually stored in a designated group of directories the vocabulary can be extended by adding external programs 25 to the appropriate directories with command interpreters prior to the present invention if a request does not correspond to.