What's New

IIS 6 has a lot more than just a new execution environment, security, and performance improvements. Without support for actually deploying and developing Web sites, IIS would be nothing more than a file exchange platform.

The Microsoft .NET Framework has heralded a number of significant changes in the way applications are developed and deployed. The .NET system is compatible with a wide array of languages and has a rich class framework for easier development, as well as support for key components of the modern Web application, such as support for Web services; something we'll look at in this chapter.

A couple of items have been covered elsewhere that also affect the way in which ASP.NET applications are executed within IIS 6, including

• Faster execution? ASP.NET applications are compiled, and their compiled forms are stored, both in memory and on disk, eliminating the need to recompile the ASP code each time it is accessed if it has already left the cache.

• Memory, deadlock, and crash protection? Through the worker process system, it's much easier to control and recover from problems when executing an ASP component. Worker processes can be automatically restarted when a problem has been identified or recycled based on time, request, CPU or memory limits.

In this chapter, we're going to have a quick look at the main components, elements, and support when developing and deploying applications within IIS 6. We'll also look at the supported languages, the impact of the .NET Framework, and some of the ISAPI extensions that allow programmers to better control and respond to their environment.