WAIS

To work with WAIS, it is best to use the X Window System version, xwais. This is available on fox.cs.vt.edu. Remember to connect to fox.cs.vt.edu using TELNET or a similar facility. Also, on that system, you must change your .login file as mentioned in earlier units - these add the WAIS routines to your path and correct the X resources file.

Before using WAIS, it is best to read a short discussion. Please use the copies on reserve in the library of [3][2]. Krol's book is easy reading, with an entire chapter (12) devoted to WAIS and quite relevant to this exercise.

You should become familiar with WAIS, and be comfortable using the xwais client. Please mail one message to the instructor summarizing your experiences. Be sure to explain whether and how ranking and relevance feedback are of use. In that message please include identification information for the best two to five documents you have found for each of the following questions. You are encouraged to use the Similar to: field to carry out relevance feedback type searching.

• Find the latest weather information. Please locate and view the most recent weather map as well as a textual description of the forecast for some relatively nearby city. Hint: find the right server by using query weather. Then find the maps from that server by using query weather gif. To abort display of an image, click on that image and use CTRL C.
• Find documents about children, parents, teachers, education, public schools and technology.
• Find articles in CACM about retrieval or hypertext or multimedia.
• Find poems about roses or other flowers.
• Find discussion in the Bible about lambs, sheep, shearers - or if you prefer, find some interesting topic in another online book of your choice.

Please, after you are done with WAIS, clean up the files created during your sessions, since otherwise you may consume a large amount of disk space (especially if you obtained image files).