Definitions for "Wide Area Information Server"
Wide Area Information Server is the oldest and by now obsolete search system for information on the internet. Before starting a full text search with the actual key words, you have to select the data sources to be searched from a long list of databases and document collections.
A network publishing system designed to help users find information over a computer network. WAIS software has four main components: the client, the server, the database, and the protocol. Discussed in RFC 1625.
Software that is used to index large text files in servers. On the client side, it finds and retrieves documents in databases, based on user defined words.