Internet Information Services (IIS)

IIS (Internet Information Server) is a group of Internet servers (including a Web or Hypertext Transfer Protocol server and a File Transfer Protocol server) with additional capabilities for Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server operating systems. IIS is Microsoft's entry to compete in the Internet server market that is also addressed by Apache, Sun Microsystems, O'Reilly, and others. With IIS, Microsoft includes a set of programs for building and administering Web sites, a search engine, and support for writing Web-based applications that access databases. Microsoft points out that IIS is tightly integrated with the Windows NT and 2000 Servers in a number of ways, resulting in faster Web page serving.

A typical company that buys IIS can create pages for Web sites using Microsoft's Front Page product (with its WYSIWYG user interface). Web developers can use Microsoft's Active Server Page (ASP)technology, which means that applications - including ActiveX controls - can be imbedded in Web pages that modify the content sent back to users. Developers can also write programs that filter requests and get the correct Web pages for different users by using Microsoft's Internet Server Application Program Interface (ISAPI) interface. ASPs and ISAPI programs run more efficiently than common gateway interface (CGI) and server-side include (SSI) programs, two current technologies. (However, there are comparable interfaces on other platforms.)

Microsoft includes special capabilities for server administrators designed to appeal to Internet service providers (ISPs). It includes a single window (or "console") from which all services and users can be administered. It's designed to be easy to add components as snap-ins that you didn't initially install. The administrative windows can be customized for access by individual customers.

Microsoft has been criticized for IIS's susceptibility to computer virus attacks such as Code Red and Nimda.

Internet Information Services (IIS, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server created by Microsoft for use with Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP. It has been an integral part of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 4.0, though it may be absent from some editions (e.g. Windows XP Home edition). IIS is not turned on by default when Windows is installed. The IIS Manager is accessed through the Microsoft Management Console or Administrative Tools in the Control Panel.

What is an IIS Application?

An IIS (Internet Information Server) application is a Visual Basic application that lives on a Web server and responds to requests from the browser. An IIS application uses HTML to present its user interface and uses compiled Visual Basic code to process requests and respond to events in the browser.

To the user, an IIS application appears to be made up of a series of HTML pages. To the developer, an IIS application is made up of a special type of object called a webclass, that in turn contains a series of resources called webitems. The webclass acts as the central functional unit of the application, processing data from the browser and sending information to the users. You define a series of procedures that determine how the webclass responds to these requests. The webitems are the HTML pages and other data the webclass can send to the browser in response to a request.