Wide area information servers

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The Wide Area Information Servers search service , WAIS for short , was developed under the direction of Brewster Kahle . WAIS has been publicly available on the Internet since 1991 .

Files that can be accessed on the Internet are listed within the WAIS database system . For the first time, WAIS enables a full text search within the database. To use WAIS, you need a special WAIS client that is able to communicate with the WAIS servers.

All WAIS servers manage individual databases, i. H. the data stocks are not centralized on a database, nor do the servers exchange data with one another.

Each WAIS server contains one or more databases that contain a certain range of information, e.g. B. archeology, biology, poetry or weather reports. To get an overview of the existing WAIS servers, there was the directory-of-servers, a directory of WAIS servers, at quake.think.com. For each database there is a source description that provides information about the content of a database and the associated WAIS server.

For the first time, WAIS made it possible to search through completely different databases using a uniform user interface, the WAIS client. The WAIS search mechanism was the basis for further development with GOPHER and VERONICA .

Web links

  • RFC 1625 - WAIS over Z39.50-1988 M. St. Pierre, J. Fullton, K. Gamiel, J. Goldman, B. Kahle, J. Kunze, H. Morris, F. Schiettecatte