Wide Area Information Servers

Wide Area Information Servers

(networking, information science)(WAIS) A distributedinformation retrieval system. WAIS is supported by Apple Computer, Thinking Machines and Dow Jones. Clients areable to retrieve documents using keywords. The search returnsa list of documents, ranked according to the frequency ofoccurrence of the keyword(s) used in the search. The clientcan retrieve text or multimedia documents stored on theserver. WAIS offers simple natural language input,indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a "relevancefeedback" mechanism which allows the results of initialsearches to influence future searches. It uses the ANSI Z39.50 service. Public domain implementations areavailable.

Other information retrieval systems include archie,Gopher, Prospero, and World-Wide Web.

Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.infosystems.wais.

Telnet.