What is Veronica?
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Developed at the University of Nevada, Veronica is a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu item on thousands of gopher servers. The Veronica database can be searched from most major gopher menus. The name is a play on the less capable Archie program. A service that maintains an index of titles of gopher items, and provides keyword searches of those titles. A veronica search originates with a user's request for a search, submitted via a gopher client. The result of a veronica search is a set of gopher-type data items, which is returned to the gopher client in the form of a gopher-compliant menu. The user can access any of the resultant data items by selecting from the returned menu. A veronica search typically searches the menus of hundreds of gopher servers, perhaps all the gopher servers that are announced to the Internet. At present, there are no "veronica clients" per se; veronica is accessed through normal gopher clients. veronica is tightly integrated with the gopher protocol. The veronica service comprises two functions: 1). Harvesting menu data from gopher servers, and preparing it for use; 2). Offering searches of that database to gopher clients. These two functions are not necessarily provided by the same host computer. Most users and administrators of veronica search servers will not need to be concerned with the first phase of the process. Operators of veronica query-engines can obtain a prepared dataset for use with the query server. veronica evolved as a solution to the problem of resource discovery in the rapidly expanding gopher meta-burrow. At the University of Nevada, there was an outcry for an easy way to find gopher-based information without doing a menu-by-menu, site-by-site search. |
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