Veronica was a
search engine
A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...
system for the
Gopher protocol
The Gopher protocol () is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative t ...
, released in November 1992 by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie at the
University of Nevada, Reno
The University of Nevada, Reno (Nevada, the University of Nevada, or UNR) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Reno, Nevada, United States. It is the state's flagship public university and prim ...
.
During its existence, Veronica was a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu item on thousands of Gopher servers. The Veronica database could be searched from most major Gopher menus. Although by 1999 the original Veronica database was no longer accessible, various local Veronica installations and at least one complete rewrite ("Veronica-2") still exist.
The existence of Veronica induced another Gopher search tool from the
University of Utah
The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...
originally called
Jughead.
While the two were separate search tools, a Jughead instance could be configured with a veronica control file in order to let the Veronica harvester know how to obtain the data file from Jughead.
Naming
The search engine was named after the character
Veronica Lodge from
Archie Comics
Archie Comic Publications, Inc. (often referred to simply as Archie Comics) is an American comic book publisher headquartered in the village of Pelham, New York. The company's many titles feature the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Jug ...
, an intentional analogy with the naming of the
Archie search engine, a search engine for
FTP servers. A
backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
for Veronica is "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives".
Cory Doctorow
at about 12:37 Cory states in his podcast what Veronica stands for.
See also
* Archie – a search engine for finding FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...
files.
* Jughead – an alternative search engine
A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...
system for the Gopher protocol
The Gopher protocol () is a communication protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative t ...
.
* WAIS – another client-server text searching system of the same era.
References
External links
local-veronica source
Search Veronica-2
an actively indexed re-implementation of Veronica.
Gopher (protocol)
Internet protocols
Internet search engines
Internet Standards
Unix Internet software
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