Wide Area Information Server

Wide Area Information Server

Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" (Z39.50:1988) to search index databases on remote computers. It was developed in the late 1980s as a project of Thinking Machines, Apple Computer, Dow Jones, and KPMG Peat Marwick.

WAIS did not adhere to either the standard or its OSI framework (adopting instead TCP/IP) but created a unique protocol inspired by Z39.50:1988.

Read more about Wide Area Information Server:  History, Directory of Servers, People, WAIS and Gopher

Famous quotes containing the words wide, area and/or information:

    In sunburnt parks where Sundays lie,
    Or the wide wastes beyond the cities,
    Teams in grey deploy through sunlight.

    Talk it up, boys, a little practice.
    Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985)

    Whether we regard the Women’s Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.
    Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)

    Information networks straddle the world. Nothing remains concealed. But the sheer volume of information dissolves the information. We are unable to take it all in.
    Günther Grass (b. 1927)