This FAQ follows the RFC1153 recommendations for message digests and thus should easily be viewed by newsreaders that understand message digests. WAIS is a networked information retrieval system. Client applications are able to retrieve text or multimedia documents stored on the servers.
Client applications request documents using keywords.
Servers search a full text index for the documents and return a list of documents containing the keyword. The client may then request the server to send a copy of any of the documents found. WAIS uses the Z39.50 query protocol to communicate between clients and servers. WAIS was developed as a project of Thinking Machines, Apple Computer, Dow Jones, and KPMG Peat Marwick. A version of WAIS that is freely redistributable is available with full source to the server, indexing software, and many clients.