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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for WAIS ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 1. What is WAIS? WAIS stands for Wide Area Information Servers, and is an architecture for a distributed information retrieval system. WAIS is based on the client server model of computation, and allows users of computers to share information using a common computer-to-computer protocol. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 2. Where can I FTP WAIS is available via anonymous FTP from a variety of sources. The main distributor is think.com, in the wais subdirectory. a. a mac client? think.com:/wais/WAIStation0.62.hqx b. a unix client? a few UNIX based clients are available in the core distribution, which can be found on think.com: think.com:/wais/wais-8-b#.tar.Z, where # is the most recent version (4 at this time). This includes the server, and clients for X Windows, GNU Emacs and a couple of simple shell-based clients. c. a dos client? The University of North Carolina has been a main developement site for WAIS software. Several DOS clients can be found in the FTP archives on wais.oit.unc.edu. d. a NeXT client? A client for NeXT can be found in think.com:/wais/XXX e. a VMS client? WAIS has been ported to VMS by the folks at the University of North Carolina. f. the server? An example WAIS server is part of the core distribution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 3. How do I find out what WAIS databases there are? WAIS provides a service called the Directory of Servers. The Directory of Servers is a WAIS server like any other information source, but contains information about the other WAIS servers on the Internet. To find out about servers, simply ask the directory-of-servers source a question. A complete listing of the advertized sources (databases) is available via anonymous FTP from think.com:/wais/wais-sources.tar.Z ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 4. What do I do when the directory of servers is unreachable? Sometimes the Directory of Servers is not available. There are backup servers that contain copies of the list of source in the Directory of Servers. To find out about them, use the Directory of Servers when it is available, and ask about "directory of servers". ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 5. How do I add a server to the directory of servers? To add a server to the Directory of Servers, simply mail a source description structure to wais-directory-of-servers@quake.think.com. If you use the waisindex program from the core wais distribution, you may use the -register argument and the source description structure will be mailed automatically to wais-directory-of-servers@quake.think.com. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 6. Where can I read more about WAIS in the trade press? A complete WAIS bibliography is in the doc subdirectory of the WAIS distribution. It is also available via WAIS using the wais-doc.src source. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 7. What is Z39.50? Z39.50 is a computer-to-computer protocol designed for the library community to assist in locating documents in library archvies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 8. Who is working on Z39.50 implementations? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 9. Do they interoperate? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 10. Where do these people talk about protocol details? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 11. What's a Z39 anyway? Where did these people come from? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 12. What other systems work with WAIS? WAIS is principally a protocol, and hence other systems designed for information access may use the protocol. A fe examples are listed below. a. What's a gopher? Gopher is a Campus Wide Information System designed at the University of Minnesota. More information on Gopher can be found from XXX. b. What's WWW (World Wide Web)? c. What does "archie" have to do with WAIS? Archie is a tool designed at the University of Toronto for use in locating anonymous FTP archives. This is a natural information retrieval application. To date there are three systems that relate WAIS and archie: 1. Archie: archie is using the WAIS indexer and information retrieval tools to allow free text search on the Archie database. 2. WAIS-archie: there is a WAIS server that has indexed the complete list of Archie filenames. 3. ftpable-readmes.src: there is a WAIS server that has indexed the complete list of README files in the archie list. d. What does Prospero have to do with WAIS? e. How does WAIS relate to X.500 (ISO directory service) ? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 18. What's the scoring algorithm used by WAIS? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 19. How do I approximate a boolean search? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 20. How do I make a good index to a set of documents? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 21. What alternatives do I have to the default document parser? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 22. What relationship does WAIS have to DowQuest? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 23. How much does DowQuest cost, and what can I learn from it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 24. Can the results be e-mailed back to my Internet mailbox? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 25. Are there any commercial WAIS servers? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 26. Can I look things up in the Whole Earth Catalog? the American Library Directory? Books in Print? Dissertation Abstracts International? the Library of Congress? Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory? the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers? - Why not? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 27. Can I use WAIS to search through and display images? sounds? video? X-rays? Postscript files? SGML-encoded text? multimedia documents? e-mail? usenet news? catalogs, directories, lists, lexicons, dictionaries? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 28. What's wrong with WAIS? as a protocol? in relation to scaling up to 1000s of servers? with the existing clients? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 29. How do I integrate WAIS into my campus-wide information system (CWIS) ? mail-based archive server (MBAS) ? anonymous FTP server ? mail reader ? news system ? Hypercard stack ? pen-based computer ? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: 30. How do I do WAIS over a dialup connection ?
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.