TABLE OF CONTENTS There has never been so much excitement for a Microsoft Web server as there is for IIS 7.0. It is easy to understand why, when developers across all languages have the same freedoms. The parity stopped when a developer using ASP.NET attempted to garner full control of requests incoming to the Web server. This freedom wasn t allowed unless a developer knew C++ and was familiar with the complex Internet Server Application Programming Interfaces (ISAPIs) that were shipped with IIS 1.0 and later versions. These rules are changed with IIS 7.0, as developers can choose their languages of choice, and managed code developers have the same access to the same events as their C/C++ counterparts. The IIS 7.0 core server hasn t met a developer it doesn t like.
This book focuses on administration more than development, but cannot avoid the fact that the landscape for development on IIS has drastically increased with IIS 7.0. Administrators should know that IIS 6.0 and previous versions were in a semi-open system where developers were offered a complex mechanism to modify the behavior of the Web server via ISAPI filters. In IIS 7.0, that barrier has been broken down and is now open to developers who write both native (C/C++) and managed (VB.NET, C#) code.
It is important to understand how native code modules are implemented and installed in IIS 7.0. Beyond that, an administrator needs to understand the implications of introducing managed code into IIS 7.0 and furthermore,...
