ON THE STRATEGY OF FUTURE OBSERVATIONS AND MODELING OF THE BETA-LYR SYSTEM

beta Lyr is an enigmatic object. Despite several decades of concentrat ed observational and theoretical effort, our understanding of the syst em is still rather poor. We discuss two existing structural models of the system, the massive torus model of Wilson (1981), and the low mass accretion disk model of Hubeny and Plavec (1991). In particular, we a nswer recent criticism of the low mass disk model expressed by the pro ponents of the massive disk hypothesis. We show that although both the ories have a large degree of internal consistency, there are several s erious physical objections against the massive disk model. In particul ar, such a model requires unrealistically low viscosity (large Reynold s number). Moreover, such massive disk is likely to be dynamically uns table. Finally, we propose several observational and theoretical appro aches that could lead to construction of a more physically realistic m odel of the beta Lyr system.