24 What are Gopher, WAIS, and WWW?
Description
This article is from the Amiga Networking FAQ, by Richard Norman with numerous contributions by others.
24 What are Gopher, WAIS, and WWW?
Three kinds of network information servers. Each more powerful than the next, but with some interconnectivity. Each server requires a client application to allow the user to access the information. For Example, a Mosaic client can access all three servers. The main purpose of these client/servers is to help a user navigate the Internet to find information and files.
Gopher:
Gopher is a menu utility which simply uses FTP for retrieving files from archive sites. Gopher also uses a search utility called Veronica for aiding users in finding files in the gopher archive sites. Veronica can do keyword searches whereas Archie can only search for file names.
WAIS:
WAIS is Wide Area Information Server which provides information lookup services to libraries and databases on the Internet. A simple WAIS client allows the user to select databases to search from a list. The user then provides keywords to search for, and the WAIS client allows the user to view any matches found. This is cumbersome once the list of databases grows into the thousands. Screenfull after screenfull of database names scroll by.
As of March 16, 1994 future versions of WAIS server & client library will be known as ZDist NOT freeWAIS. freeWAIS is based on the older version of the search and retrieval protocol Z39.50-1988. The newest version of that protocol Z39.50-1992 is NOT backwards compatible.
Since both versions will be around for awhile, a name change for the server/client software libraries had to be established. Both freeWAIS and ZDist are maintained by CNIDR. Kevin Gamiel is the contact.
It should be noted that the Z39.50 protocol is a standard which is NOT published or maintained by CNIDR, but is publicly available. Z39.50-1992 is the protocol of choice for many other network based information search and retrieval applications besides WAIS.
Much more info is available thru Mosaic by searching on CNIDR, WAIS, or Z39.
WWW:
WWW stands for world wide web which is name used to describe the global system of hypertext and multimedia services. WWW consists of clients called browsers and servers called web servers. Web servers use http and html to make the WWW hypertext and multimedia services available to mosaic and AMosaic clients over the Internet. WAIS support is being added to Mosaic. Mosaic offers WAIS an effective interface and WAIS offers Mosaic an effective search engine. Other commercial search engines are also available.
All three of these servers use the TCP/IP protocol, and all have both public domain and commercial versions of the clients.
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