Sunday, May 07, 2006

What is new in IIS 7.0 for Web Developers

Flexible Extensibility Model for Powerful Customization:
IIS 7 enables developers to extend IIS to provide custom functionality in new, more powerful ways. IIS7 extensibility begins with an all-new core server API-set, which supports both native (C/C++) and managed (C#, VB.NET) feature module development. IIS7 also enables extensibility of configuration, scripting, event logging, and administration tool feature-sets, providing software developers a complete server platform on which to build Web server extensions.

Rich Troubleshooting Tools and Diagnostic Information:
IIS 7 enables developers and IT Professionals to more easily troubleshoot errand Web sites and applications. IIS7 provides a clear view of internal diagnostic information about IIS, and collects and surfaces detailed diagnostic events to aid troubleshooting problematic servers.

All New Delegated Administration:
IIS7 enables Web Hosters and IT Professionals to safely and securely delegate fine-grained administrative control to developers and content owners, reducing cost of ownership and administrative burden for the Administrator. IIS7 enables Administrators to delegated configuration tasks to developers, and supports delegated administration of sites and applications through an all-new administration tool.

Enhanced Security through Workload Customization:
IIS 7 is designed to enable the Developer to customize in a fine-grained manner exactly which features should be installed and running on their Web server. IIS is now factored into 40+ feature modules that can be independently installed on the server, dramatically reducing the security attack surface of the server, and providing Developers and Administrators more confidence and control over their servers.

Improved Support for Server Farms:
IIS 7 makes deployment and management of content and configuration data in server farm scenarios easier than ever before. IIS 7 provides an easy way for Web site and application configuration to be copied between servers. Configuration information can now be shared across multiple front-end servers, avoiding costly and error-prone replication and manual synchronization issues that plague today’s Administrators.

Application and Health Management for Web Services:
IIS 7 enables development and hosting of Web services, over any protocol, in a secure and robust environment. The Windows Activation Service (WAS) is a Windows Vista / Longhorn Server system service that provides process activation and health management services for all types of message-activated applications. WAS is an evolution of the robust and secure IIS 6.0 request processing model, which was extended in this release to support pluggable activation for arbitrary protocol listeners. WAS provides applications with intelligent resource management, on-demand activation, health-monitoring, and automatic failure detection and recycling.WAS includes a worker process environment that hosts applications independent from message protocol. For example: an application hosted by WAS may live in a single application domain within a given process and still communicate over multiple protocols.