Programming ASP.NET, 3rd Edition

Internet Information Server (IIS)

IIS is Microsoft’s web server that works in conjunction with ASP.NET. We will cover the topics relevant to developing and deploying ASP.NET web applications.

IIS Versions

This chapter assumes that you are using IIS 5 or 5.1, the versions that are included with the Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems, respectively. IIS 6 (included with Windows Server 2003) features a similar interface but adds enhanced options and a revamped request processing architecture. You can use all the instructions in this chapter to configure virtual directories in IIS 6.

You can determine which version of IIS is serving a page by enabling tracing on that page (add trace="true" to the Page directive) and looking for the value of SERVER_SOFTWARE under Server Variables. Alternatively, add a Label control to the form and set its Text property as follows:

    lblVersion.Text = Request.ServerVariables["Server_Software"];

If the page is being served from VS2005 rather than IIS, the value of SERVER_SOFTWARE will be blank.

Virtual Directories

When you work with web applications, you will frequently need to create, configure, or examine the properties of a virtual directory. Virtual directories in IIS are central to web applications. A virtual directory is any directory on the server, or accessible to the server, that has been made available by IIS to requests from the Web. Virtual directories are isomorphic with applications, i.e., each virtual directory is a separate application, ...