From: BROE at AARDVARK.UCS.UOKNOR.EDU (Bruce Roe)
Newsgroups: bionet.software
Subject: WAIS for VMS? and other questions
Hi fellow netters,
The recent discussion of WAIS has prompted the following questions:
1. Is there a WAIS client program available for VAX/VMS?
In his earlier posting, Rob Harper suggested:
* VMS servers and clients ask Jim Fullton (fullton at lambada.oit.unc.edu)
maybe Jim or someone else could enlighten all of us??
Hmm, I remember seeing some mail on a WAIS mailing list about that a while
ago ... but how can I find it again ?
Here we have a classic case where WAIS can help. I just start up a
new question in my Xwais window - add the wais-discussion-archives.src and
type the query "vms vax" ... top of the list of matching articles is this
one:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 91 15:55:46 EDT
From: Jim Fullton <fullton at rhumba.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: WAIS for VMS
We now have a functional VMS server operating. Feel free to announce
it. Next step is to put a VTX search engine in. Think about how
*that* would impact the universities!
[The next day:]
We now have a VMS client working. Unfortunately, we had
to switch from stream network i/o to regulsr socket i/o, like
we did under DOS.
We will be putting up the complete UNC Campus Phonebook in
a day or so on our VMS machine.
Jim
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Looks promising - although that was only last week - you might try asking
Jim Fullton directly regarding availablility
2. In a related question (or series of questions?), are any of the
following available via the internet and if not, when will they??
a. MEDLINE
b. Chemical Abstracts
c. Biologial Abstracts
d. Current Contents
I know that the above are available in various forms, CD-ROM, disks, etc
but with all the connectivity we have now-a-days would it be too much to
ask that these databases coul be accessed via the internet?
These are all 'commercial' databases in one form or another - MEDLINE is
produced by the National Library of Medicine but it is not freely
available. I believe there are plans to put it on the Internet at some
stage but I don't know any more than that. I would assume that putting up a
CD-ROM of Current Contents on the Internet would violate their licence
agreement with the purchaser in a *serious* way.
WAIS is an excellent vehicle for serving this sort of data and
it has the hooks built in to it to monitor usage and to charge users for
access. Also I believe that such comercial use of the Internet is
prohibited, although there is a lot of interest in allowing commercial use
of future versions of Internet.
For a taste of what a Current Contents server would be like try out the
BionetJournals.src that Eliot Lear set up at GenBank/IG recently - this is
a reformatted version of the bionet.journal.contents newsgroup that Dave
Kristofferson puts together. Its a simple enough idea but it works great !
Please post replies to "bio-software at genbank.bio.net" for everyone to read.
Thanks,
/o o\ \ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /
o X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X
\O/ / \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ Bruce A. Roe, Univ. Oklahoma, Chem&Biochem.
Robert Jones jones at think.com
Thinking Machines Corporation 245 First Street Cambridge MA 02142
