About Wais...


WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) are servers which hold databases containing mostly text-based documents. WAIS allows keyword search on texts of those documents. Each WAIS server holds databases specialized on specific topics. You can find topics ranging from Agriculture to Zoology. You must use a WAIS client on your computer to access WAIS sources (like 'WinWais' on Windows systems, for example). However you can access Wais databases via e-mail at the address: WAISmail@quake.think.com. First of all you you need a directory-of-servers list which shows what databases are available on a particular subject. The directory-of-servers is also available via anonymous FTP from ftp.wais.com in the directory /pub/directory-of-servers.


Wais via e-mail


You can query WAIS databases by sending commands in the body part of an e-mail message to WAISmail@quake.think.com.

  • help to get the help file
  • maxres number to set the maximum number of results to be returned.
  • search source-name | "source-name1 source-name2 ..." keyword (where: source-name is a source name as found in the directory-of-servers, and keyword is WHAT are you searching).
  • Retrieve docid retrieves a document from a database (Docid is a Document IDentifier as returned by a search). If the document is of type TEXT or WSRC you will get the result directly. Other types will be UUENCODED before being transmitted.
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