Wide Area Information Servers
WAIS
<networking, information science> (WAIS) A distributed
information retrieval system. WAIS is supported by {Apple
Computer}, {Thinking Machines} and Dow Jones. {Clients} are
able to retrieve documents using keywords. The search returns
a list of documents, ranked according to the frequency of
occurrence of the keyword(s) used in the search. The client
can retrieve text or {multimedia} documents stored on the
{server}. WAIS offers simple {natural language} input,
indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a "relevance
feedback" mechanism which allows the results of initial
searches to influence future searches. It uses the {ANSI
Z39.50} service. {Public domain} implementations are
available.
Other information retrieval systems include {archie},
{Gopher}, {Prospero}, and {World-Wide Web}.
Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.infosystems.wais.
{Telnet (telnet://sunsite.unc.edu)}.
(1995-03-13)