Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Security, Membership, and Role Management with C# and VB

1.1. Overview of IIS 7.0

IIS 7.0 is the new web server that ships with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Similar to the previous versions of IIS, this new version will continue to handle and process web requests that arrive at the Windows machine. The most mature version of IIS before the current one is IIS 6.0 which ships with Windows Server 2003. IIS 6.0 is very robust in terms of security, speed, process management, and reliability. IIS 7.0 builds its core engine on its predecessor and improves several areas. In addition, many new features have been added, making it extensible and manageable, thus leveraging IIS 7.0 to be a web server platform powerful enough to handle the challenges of present and future web applications.

The new IIS 7.0 features and characteristics are briefly summarized and presented in the next few sections to give a high-level overview of what has been done to improve the web server.

1.1.1. Modular Architecture

As mentioned above, IIS 7.0 bases its core engine on the best features of IIS 6.0 and adds to them the extensibility and accessibility for developers through its modular core engine. IIS 7.0 is based on a plug-in architecture that allows developers to have a hand in the processing of web requests. IIS 7.0 provides extensibility through its runtime pipeline, configuration management, and operational features to have a customizable web server for varying needs and requirements.

Making IIS 7.0 modular gives you the chance to customize it according ...