bcn@cs.washington.edu (Clifford Neuman) (06/13/91)
The Archie database at McGill University can now be queried using Prospero and a standalone Archie client supporting the Archie "prog" query is available. For users running Prospero, the database can be found in the Prospero directory /archive-sites/archie. If you connect to that directory using Prospero, you will see subdirectories "host" and "regex". If you look in "host", you will see nothing, but if you look in "host/hostname", you will see Archie's view of the root directory for that host. You can connect to or list individual subdirectories as well. The directory "regex" also appears to be empty, but if you specify a regular expression as a file name, you will see a directory containing the results of the Archie query. Version Alpha.4.5 of Prospero is available by anonymous FTP from cs.washington.edu from the file pub/prospero.tar.Z. Older version continue to work, but pre-version 4 clients are more likely to time out on long queries. This release includes a standalone Archie client that, once compiled, can be run from systems that aren't running Prospero. Those who have already installed Prospero Version 4.4 can retrieve the Archie client separately from pub/pfs/files/prog.tar.Z on cs.washington.edu. Although useful in its own right, the Archie client should be considered a sample client. It shows how an application can query the Archie database using the Prospero protocol. Others are encouraged to build their own applications around it. ~ Cliff