What is a WAIS Server?
The WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) was a distributed information retrieval system developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It allowed users to search for information across multiple servers using a standardized query language called Z39.50.
The WAIS system consisted of a network of servers, each containing a database of documents and indexes. Users could access these databases using a WAIS client, which would send queries to the servers and return relevant results.
One of the most significant innovations of the WAIS system was its use of a hierarchical topology, similar to that of a file system. This allowed users to navigate through the database using a simple path-based syntax, making it easier to find specific information.
IMPACT:
The WAIS system had a significant impact on the development of the Gopher and World Wide Web topologies. Both Gopher and the World Wide Web were designed as client-server systems, allowing users to access information from remote servers. However, they differed in their approach to navigation and organization.
Gopher, developed at the University of Minnesota in 1991, used a tree-like structure to organize information, similar to the WAIS system\'s hierarchical topology. Users could navigate through the tree by selecting nodes, which would display a list of available resources.
The World Wide Web, developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989, used a more decentralized approach, with information organized into pages linked together by hypertext. This allowed for a more flexible and dynamic organization of information, but also made it more difficult to navigate and search for specific content. The World-Wide Web, however, became a popular method to search for content deemed to be interesting. Web servers would serve out content composed in the HTML, or Hyper-Text-Markup-Language. The precursor to this language for document formatting was the available document formatting programs found on Main-frame computers running Timesharing operating systems. Such of these was Runoff, nroff, and troff; to name a few such programs. Web Clients would decipher HTML formatted files and display them in the Web browser.
Despite their differences, both Gopher and the World Wide Web (Hyper Text Markup Language [HTML]) share some similarities with the WAIS system, including the use of client-server architecture, standardized protocols, and the ability to search for information using keywords. The WAIS system served as an important precursor to these technologies, demonstrating the potential of distributed information retrieval and paving the way for the development of the modern internet.