Internet Information Services (IIS)

The first web applications residing on the server starts a new process for each remote request. Microsoft has revolutionized this concept by introducing a single process (called service) that monitors port 80 waiting for network packets and loads the appropriate dynamic library (Dynamik-link libraries, DLL) for the management of separate requests. The web platform is based on standard Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).

Basically any web application works the same way. No matter which platform you are using hardware or software, but must always be present on the server some kind of software that monitors port 80 (the one typically used) waiting for HTTP requests. When a request is the server's job to answer the same way and in some operating systems Microsoft IIS component is delegated to do this. When a browser makes a call to a server system with Microsoft IIS intercepts the request and searches for the resource identified by the URL received.

Splits directories in IIS its different sections called virtual directories. For example, suppose someone tries to access a resource identified by the following web address:

 



 http://www.miosito.com/prodotti/caratteristiche.htm

 

Clearly the domain mysite is entirely fictional, but suppose it is not. The part http://www.miosito.com identifies the server sends the request to that URL with a maze router. When the request reaches the server, it checks whether the resource is present in caratteristiche.htm directory named one of its products. If the server running IIS is a virtual directory products.
Each virtual directory is typically related to a single application in practice is used to map a physical directory (residing on the hard disk of the server) with an Internet address. In this way IIS can handle different applications. Each virtual directory includes various configuration properties including security options, options for error handling and many others.

Although the development of ASP.NET applications is critical to know the features of IIS that knowledge becomes very useful when you are in debugging, testing and deploying a web application, so now we will see large the features of its operation.

To open the IIS user interface simply go to the Control Panel, click Administrative Tools and then Internet Information Services. This will open the following window (or very similar, depending on your operating system and the version of IIS installed on your computer)

On the left is a spreading tree which you can view the Web sites and virtual directories on your machine

Clicking on a site or a directory in the central part of the window displays its contents.

Clicking the right mouse button on a site or directory and selecting Properties opens the configuration window where you can set different aspects of the site and also take a lot of useful information, such as the version of ASP.NET on machine

It is clearly not the purpose of this guide to analyze all the possible configuration options, however, for the reasons outlined above I recommend you learn more about IIS because then there will be very useful.

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