Wide area information server

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) is a

Apple Computer, Dow Jones, and KPMG
Peat Marwick.

WAIS did not adhere to either the standard nor its

OSI framework
(adopting instead TCP/IP) but created a unique protocol inspired by Z39.50:1988.

History

The WAIS protocol and servers were promoted by

open source software version of WAIS for Unix
in 1991.

Inspired by the WAIS project on full-text databases and emerging

SGML
projects, Z39.50 version 2 (Z39.50:1992) was released. Unlike its 1988 predecessor, it was a compatible superset of the international ISO 10162/10163 standard.

With the advent of Z39.50:1992, the termination of support for free WAIS by Thinking Machines and the establishment of WAIS Inc as a commercial venture, the U.S. National Science Foundation funded the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) to promote Internet search and discovery systems, open source and standards.[3] CNIDR created a new, free open-source WAIS. This was the first freeWAIS based on the wais-8-b5 codebase of TMC, with a wholly new software suite Isite based upon Z39.50:1992 using Isearch as its full-text search engine.

Ulrich Pfeifer and Norbert Gövert of the computer science department of the

University of Dortmund extended the CNIDR freeWAIS code to become freeWAIS-sf with structured fields as its main improvement. Ulrich Pfeifer rewrote freeWAIS-sf in Perl
, becoming WAIT.

Inspired by WAIS' "Directory of Servers",

USGS envisioned GILS: Government Information Locator Service. GILS (based upon Z39.50:1992 with some extensions) became a U.S. Federal mandate as part of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. § 3511
).

Directory of Servers

Thinking Machines Corp provided a service called the Directory of Servers. It was a WAIS server like any other information source except containing information about the other WAIS servers on the Internet. A WAIS server with TMC WAIS code creates a special record containing

.

People

Two of the developers of WAIS,

.

WAIS Inc was sold to

Elsevier Science. Kahle and Gilliat went on to found the Internet Archive and Alexa Internet
.

WAIS and Gopher

Public WAIS is often used as a full-text

Gopher Space is a web containing many loops, the menu system gives the user the impression of a tree.[5][6]

The Web's data model is similar to the gopher model, except that menus are generalized to hypertext documents. In both cases, simple file servers generate the menus or hypertext directly from the file structure of a server. The Web's hypertext model permits the author more freedom to communicate the options available to the reader, as it can include headings and various forms of list structure.[5]

References

  1. S2CID 6337694. Retrieved 2020-08-10. WAIS has kept growing since its start in 1990, and presently, there are over 500 WAIS sources, ... {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help
    )
  2. .
  3. ^ "Award Abstract #9216963: Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery Retrieval". National Science Foundation. 1992-11-13. Retrieved 2016-03-29.
  4. ^ "AOL Buys Everyone". tidbits.com. 5 June 1995. Retrieved 2017-05-24.
  5. ^ a b Berners-Lee, Tim. "The World-Wide Web". The New Media Reader. The MIT Press.
  6. .

External links