View source for Wide area information server

{{Short description|Internet information retrieval service}}
{{Internet history timeline}}
'''Wide Area Information Server''' ('''WAIS''') is a [[client–server]] text searching system that uses the [[American National Standards Institute|ANSI]] Standard [[Z39.50]] Information Retrieval Service Definition and [[Protocol (computing)|Protocol]] Specifications for Library Applications" (Z39.50:1988) to search index [[database]]s on remote computers. It was developed in 1990<ref>{{Cite conference |title=A powerful wide-area information client |book-title=Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Computer Society International Conference |url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/527213.793548 |access-date=2020-08-10 |date=5 March 1995 |page=13 |language=EN |doi=10.1109/CMPCON.1995.512357 |isbn=9780818670299 |s2cid=6337694 |quote=WAIS has kept growing since its start in 1990, and presently, there are over 500 WAIS sources, ...|url-access=subscription }}</ref> as a project of [[Thinking Machines Corporation|Thinking Machines]], [[Apple Computer]], [[Dow Jones & Company|Dow Jones]], and [[KPMG]] Peat Marwick. 

WAIS did not adhere to either the Z39.50 standard nor its [[OSI model|OSI framework]], adopting instead [[Internet protocol suite|TCP/IP]]. It created a unique protocol inspired by Z39.50:1988.

== History ==
{{more citations needed section|date=November 2025}}
The WAIS protocol and servers were promoted by [[Thinking Machines Corporation]] (TMC) of [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]]. TMC-produced WAIS servers ran on their massively parallel CM-2 ([[Connection Machine]]) and [[SPARC]]-based CM-5 MP [[supercomputer]]s. WAIS clients were developed for various [[operating system]]s and [[windowing system]]s including [[Microsoft Windows]], [[classic Mac OS|Macintosh]], [[NeXT]], [[X Window System|X]], [[GNU Emacs]], and character terminals.<ref>{{cite journal
| last=Kahle
| first=Brewster
| author2=Morris, Harry
| author3=Goldman, Jonathan
| author4=Erickson, Thomas
| author5= Curran, John
| title=Interfaces for distributed systems of information servers
| journal=Journal of the American Society for Information Science
| year=1993
| volume=44
| issue=8
| pages=453–467
| doi=10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199309)44:8<453::AID-ASI4>3.0.CO;2-E}}</ref> TMC released a free [[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.<ref>{{cite web
| url=https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9216963
| title=Award Abstract #9216963: Clearinghouse for Network Information Discovery Retrieval
| publisher=National Science Foundation
| date=1992-11-13
| access-date=2016-03-29}}</ref>  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 (computing)|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 '''s'''tructured '''f'''ields as its main improvement. Ulrich Pfeifer rewrote freeWAIS-sf in [[Perl]], becoming WAIT.

Inspired by WAIS' "Directory of Servers", [[Eliot Christian]] of [[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|Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995]] ({{usc|44|3511}}).

==Directory of Servers==
{{unreferenced section|date=March 2011}}
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 [[metadata]] plus some common words describing its indexed content. The record is uploaded to the central server and indexed along with the records from other public servers. The directory can be searched to find servers that might have content relevant to a specific field of interest. This model of searching for (WAIS) servers to search became the model for [[Government Information Locator Service|GILS]] and Peter Deutsch's [[WHOIS++]] [[Distributed computing|distributed]] [[white pages]] [[directory service|directory]].

==People==
{{more citations needed section|date=November 2025}}
Two of the developers of WAIS, [[Brewster Kahle]] and Harry Morris, left Thinking Machines to found WAIS Inc in Menlo Park, California, with [[Bruce Gilliat]]. WAIS Inc. was originally a joint project between Apple Computer, Peat Marwick, Dow Jones, and Thinking Machines. In 1992, the presidential campaign of [[Ross Perot]] used the WAIS product as a campaign wide information system, connecting the field offices to the national office. Later, [[Perot Systems]] adopted WAIS to better access the information in its corporate databases. Other early clients were the [[United States Environmental Protection Agency|Environmental Protection Agency]], [[Library of Congress]], and the [[United States Department of Energy|Department of Energy]] and later the ''[[Wall Street Journal]]'' and ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]''.

WAIS Inc was sold to [[AOL]] in May 1995 for $15 million.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://tidbits.com/article/1459|title=AOL Buys Everyone|website=tidbits.com|date=5 June 1995 |language=en|access-date=2017-05-24}}</ref> Following the sale, Margaret St. Pierre left WAIS Inc to start Blue Angel Technologies. Her WAIS variant formed the basis of MetaStar. Georgios Papadopoulos left to found [[Atypon]]. François Schiettecatte left [[Human Genome Project]] at [[Johns Hopkins Hospital]] and started FS-Consult and developed his own variant of WAIS which eventually became ScienceServer, which was later 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 [[Search engine (computing)|search engine]] for individual [[Internet Gopher]] servers, supplementing the popular [[Veronica (search engine)|Veronica]] system which only searches the menu titles of Gopher sites. WAIS and Gopher share the [[World Wide Web]]'s client–server architecture and a certain amount of its functionality. The WAIS protocol is influenced largely by the z39.50 protocol designed for networking library catalogs. It allows a text-based search, and retrieval following a search. Gopher provides a free text search mechanism, but principally uses menus. A menu is a list of titles, from which the user may pick one. While [[Gopher Space]] is a web containing many loops, the menu system gives the user the impression of a tree.<ref name="ReferenceA">Berners-Lee, Tim. "The World-Wide Web". ''The New Media Reader''. The MIT Press.</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Computer Applications In Business|last=Parameswaran|publisher=S. Chand Publisher|year=2008|isbn=978-8121912006|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=og0rDAAAQBAJ&q=Gopher+Space|pages=198}}</ref>

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.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://archive.org/details/wais_supercomputer_parc Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) launch lecture] (Xerox PARC, 1991)
* [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1625 RFC1625: WAIS over Z39.50-1988] M. St. Pierre, J. Fullton, K. Gamiel, J. Goldman, B. Kahle, J. Kunze, H. Morris, F. Schiettecatte, June 1994
* [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4156 RFC 4156: The wais URI Scheme]  P. Hoffman, August 2005
* [http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april97/04lynch.html The Z39.50 Information Retrieval Standard Part I: A Strategic View of Its Past, Present and Future], [[Clifford A. Lynch]], ''D-Lib'' Magazine, April 1997
*Usage of WHOIS through the ''swais'' command: {{Cite web|url=http://www2.cs.duke.edu/csl/docs/EFF_Guide/eeg_212.html|title=EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet - Wide-Area Information Servers|website=www2.cs.duke.edu|access-date=2020-01-26|date=1994}}

{{gopher clients}}
{{Internet search}}
{{URI scheme}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wide Area Information Server}}
[[Category:Internet Standards]]
[[Category:Unix network-related software]]
[[Category:Internet protocols]]
[[Category:Internet search engines]]
[[Category:Gopher (protocol)]]