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On Tue, 9 May 1995, Jeremy Allaire wrote:

> < Actually, as content is foisted on the Net willy-nilly, WAIS is likely
> to become a very important protocol in the future, due to it's indexing
> capability and client-server architecture over TCP/IP.>>
> 
> WAIS is very important, but not the native interface as seen through
> traditional third-party apps or through a gateway.  More important,
> and something which is entirely browser independent, is server-side
> gateways which allow transpartent access to WAIS database.  That,
> I think, is important.


> < "the index to the Net" or small parts of it. >>

> On this count, I am not convinced.  The WAIS engine leaves much to
> be desired in terms of a generalized index.  It is quite super for
> text-indexing, but real "agent" technology combined with concept
> level indexing and object code are the requirements for any truly
> roboust Web-index-agent system.
There are many derivatives of WAIS (including the WAIS inc. server),
the original WAIS server was published under GPL several years ago.
The GPL version is pretty vanilla, but a good start.

> I personally think General Magic
> (vis a vis Telescript) is poised to take the Net.Index.Agent scene by
> storm.  Perhpas in collaboration with WAIS, or even a company like
> Yahoo, who is poised to be the beginning "agent-base", if you will.
Actually, great minds think alike.  The commercial WAIS servers provide 
many of the features you are talking about.  WAIS inc has juiced up their 
machines, and provide some good "massively parallel searching" 
capabilities.  The major contributions (Z39.50, text indexing engine, 
and connectionless delivery mechanism) provide an excellent 
infrastructure for a variety of servers/clients.  Just as HTTP provides 
an excellent infrastructure for user presentation.

> WAIS has a role, though I think diminishing, as server-side gateways
> to a wide-variety of RDBMS and other text-indexing systems storm
> the market this year.

The RDMS features are a different issue (SQL tends to handle that pretty 
well), and text-indexing isn't an infrastructure issue as much as an 
internal implementation issue.  The Z39.50 protocol could drive "6 
million smart squirrels" and the user wouldn't care.  The NetScape server 
is Much more efficient as a server, the NetScape browser is also much 
more efficient as a client.  The two together make a dynamic duo indeed.
The integrety of the infrastructure is that one can use "doggy slow 
mosaic" with a Netscape server, and use "dumb as a rock" httpd servers 
can be accessed by NetScape browsers.

Can Yahoo make a better presentation?  Absolutely.  Wouldn't it be nice 
if you could simultaineously query several hundred servers at the same 
time, and stop the search as soon as you got the hits you needed.

Archie was pretty good too, but it's getting real slow lately.

> Jeremy Allaire

	Rex Ballard
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Thu May 11 00:17:41 1995