Archie is a tool for indexing FTP

File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...

 archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 search engine. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage

Alan Emtage

Alan Emtage conceived and implemented the first version of Archie, a pre-Web internet search engine for locating material in public FTP archives....

, Bill Heelan, and J. Peter Deutsch, then students at McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 in Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

.

History and name

The earliest versions of archie simply contacted a list of FTP archives on a regular basis (contacting each roughly once a month, so as not to waste too much resources of the remote servers) and requested a listing. These listings were stored in local files to be searched using the Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

 grep

Grep

grep is a command-line text-search utility originally written for Unix. The name comes from the ed command g/re/p...

command. Later, more efficient front- and back-ends were developed, and the system spread from a local tool, to a network-wide resource, and a popular service available from multiple sites around the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. The collected data would be exchanged between the neighbouring Archie servers. The servers could be accessed in multiple ways: using a local client (such as archie or xarchie); telnet

TELNET

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

ing to a server directly; sending queries by electronic mail; and later via a World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 interface.

The name derives from the word "archive" without the v. Alan Emtage has said that contrary to popular belief, there was no association with the Archie Comics

Archie Comics

Archie Comics is an American comic book publisher headquartered in the Village of Mamaroneck, Town of Mamaroneck, New York, known for its many series featuring the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Jughead Jones. The characters were created by...

 and that he despised them.

A legacy Archie server is still maintained active for historic purposes in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 at University of Warsaw

University of Warsaw

The University of Warsaw is the largest university in Poland and one of the most prestigious, ranked as best Polish university in 2010 and 2011...

's Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling.

Archie, in the current day is a well known term used by Chester University Professor, Graham Logan.

See also

• Jughead and Veronica
  Veronica (computer)
  Veronica is a search engine system for the Gopher protocol, developed in 1992 by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie at the University of Nevada, Reno.Veronica is a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu item on thousands of Gopher servers...
  
  
• Wide area information server
  Wide area information server
  Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" to search index databases on remote computers...
  
   (WAIS)

Further reading

• Archie—A Darwinian Development Process. Peter Deutsch. IEEE Internet computing
  IEEE Internet Computing
  IEEE Internet Computing is a bi-monthly magazine, published by the IEEE Computer Society, covering all aspects of emerging and maturing Internet technologies. The journal publishes articles concerning the latest developments, key trends, and new applications related to the Internet...
  
  , January/February 2000, 4(1):69-71. Part of Millennial Forecasts, doi:10.1109/4236.815849.

External links

• Last surviving Archie web interface