Based on standards. Easy to use. Flexible and growth oriented. From this basis, a large group of developers, publishers, standards bodies, libraries, government agencies, schools, and users have been helping further the WAIS system. The WAIS client is a user-interface program that sends requests for information to local or remote servers.
Clients are available for most popular desktop environments.
The server generally runs on a machine containing one or more information sources, or WAIS databases. The protocol, Z39.50-1988, is used to connect WAIS clients and servers and is based on the 1988 Version of the NISO Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service and Protocol Standard. WAIS development began in October 1989 with the first Internet release occurring in April 1991. From the beginning, WAIS committed to use the Z39.50-1988 standard as the information retrieval protocol between WAIS clients and servers. The implementation is still in use today by existing WAIS clients and servers resulting in over 50,000 users of Z39.50-1988 on the Internet.