V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (February 2016):

WAIS
       Wide Area Information Service (Internet)


The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Wide Area Information Servers
WAIS

    (WAIS) A distributed
   information retrieval system.  WAIS is supported by Apple
   Computer, Thinking Machines and Dow Jones.  Clients are
   able to retrieve documents using keywords.  The search returns
   a list of documents, ranked according to the frequency of
   occurrence of the keyword(s) used in the search.  The client
   can retrieve text or multimedia documents stored on the
   server.  WAIS offers simple natural language input,
   indexed searching for fast retrieval, and a "relevance
   feedback" mechanism which allows the results of initial
   searches to influence future searches.  It uses the ANSI
   Z39.50 service.  Public domain implementations are
   available.

   Other information retrieval systems include archie,
   Gopher, Prospero, and web.

   Usenet newsgroup: news:comp.infosystems.wais.

   Telnet (telnet://sunsite.unc.edu).

   (1995-03-13)