Stands for "Wide Area Information Server." It is a program that can index enormous amounts of information and can make the index searchable across networks (including the Internet). WAIS will also rank the information found by searches by releavance. If that isn't enough, the search can be narrowed down even more by subsequent searches on the results found by the previous search.
WAIS
Meaning of WAIS in English
English glossary of computer and Internet terms. Английский глоссарий компьютерных и Интернет терминов. 2012