IIS Technologies

Introduction Designed to deliver high speed and secure information publishing Serves as a platform for developers to extend internet standard communication capabilities Runs as a Windows NT 4.0 (Option Pack) service

IIS Components Full Scale publishing includes following components Transport Services Client applications Administrative Tools Database Connectivity Encrypted Communication

IIS 4.0 Components Purpose Component Hypertext Publishing File Transfer ODBC Gateway Encrypted Comm. Server Admn. Hypertext Clients Component WWW Server FTP Server Internet D/Base Con. Secure Socket Layer Internet Service Mgr. Browsers

IIS 4.0 Installation Installed as a component of WinNT4.0 Run the set up wizard to install web services and various other components Simply check the items to be installed

IIS 4.0 Management IIS 4.0 introduces Microsoft Management Console (MMC) a window based tool that enables the management of all the web services & applications from a single window

Web Site Content HTML Pages Active Server Pages (ASPs) HTML Code Client Side Scripts Active Server Pages (ASPs) Client & Server Side Scripts Components

Web Content Creation Tools Hypertext Text Markup Language (HTML), Dynamic HTML Scripting Languages JavaScript, Jscript and VBScript Component Creation Languages VisualBasic, Java, VisualC++, VisualJ++ etc.

Content Authoring & Management Environment FrontPage InterDev6.0 IIS Application (VB6.0 Feature) HTML Editors

Content Publishing Environment Web Servers Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 Netscape Communication Server for WinNT Netscape Communication Server for Unix Novell Netware Web Server

ASP Technology Active Server Page (ASP) is an open environment where one can combine HTML, scripts and reusable components to create dynamic and powerful web-based business solutions ASP runs as service of web server and is optimised for multiple threads & multiple users

ASP File File created with Active server Pages have the extension .ASP ASP file is simply a file that contains HTML, scripts & calls to components When a change is made in the ASP file on the server, you need only save the changes to the file – the next time web page is loaded, the script will automatically be compiled

ASP Built-in Objects Request Response Server To get information from the user Response To send information to the user Server To control the IIS

ASP Built-in Objects Session Application To store information about the user’s current web-server session Application To share application-level information & control settings for the life-time of the application

Examples of ASP Applications A web-based Personnel Information System (Leave Monitoring System, HBA Monitoring System and other modules which form part of employee’s career cycle) Integrated on-line store, inventory and order-processing system

Dynamic HTML HTML provides limited interactivity to web pages DHTML extends HTML with an object model allowing scripting of the objects to change the styles and attributes of page elements Allows developers to bring more creativity and control to web pages, thereby adding dynamic behaviour

Examples of DHTML Use Business Applications Interactive Documents DHTML can help build dynamic forms (e.g. master detail order entry forms) and can respond to user input, recalculate on the fly and obtain additional information in the background Interactive Documents Documents delivered over the internet are essentially confined to page-by-page metaphor, whereas DHTML creates interactive documents that responds instantly to user actions

Examples of DHTML Use Dynamic Expansion Table Manipulation With DHTML Search Result pages can be programmed using scripts to provide a detailed listing as the mouse passes over it thereby, eliminating redundant fetches from the server Table Manipulation Tabular data such as Price lists can be sorted, filtered & viewed using local database engine

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

IIS Application 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

IIS Application The webclass acts as the central functional unit of the application, processing data from the browser and sending information to the users A series of procedures are defined 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

IIS Application vs ASP Application IIS applications bear a superficial resemblance to Active Server Pages applications Both types of applications present dynamic Web sites and perform their processing on the server rather than the client

IIS Application vs ASP Application However, each has its unique advantages. Active Server Pages are for script developers interested in authoring Web pages, and offer the unique capability of intermingling script with HTML IIS applications are for Visual Basic developers building Web-based applications, rather than Web pages. IIS applications allow for complicated business processing and easy access from almost any browser or platform

IIS Application vs DHTML Application Like IIS applications, DHTML applications also allow you to respond to events in an HTML page. However, there are several key differences between the two types of applications: Object model — DHTML applications use a different object model than IIS applications to access and work with the elements on an HTML page. While IIS applications use the Active Server Pages object model, DHTML applications use the DHTML object model

IIS Application vs DHTML Application Location of processing — IIS applications are designed to perform most of their processing on the Web server, but DHTML applications perform most of their processing on the browser machine. You do not create any Web server components when you create a DHTML application Dependency — DHTML applications are intended for use on intranets, and are dependent on Internet Explorer 4.0 or later, while IIS applications can be used on the Internet or an intranet. End users of an IIS application do not need a specific operating system or browser

Browser-IIS Interaction Browser sends an HTTP request to the IIS for a page on the web server The web server gets the requested page and processes the server side scripts, (which are enclosed within delimiters “<%” and “%>). The scripts can assign values to variables or request information from server (interaction with other tiers)

Browser-IIS Interaction The processed page containing only HTML and client-side scripts, if any, is sent to the browser

Case Study – Web based Reports of RuralSoft RuralSoft Reports are a combination of IIS Application and ASP based web pages The web-site to host the Reports is prepared using ASP technology (InterDev6.0) and the actual reports have been developed using IIS Application, thus combining the power of the two technologies

Case Study – Web based Reports of RuralSoft The Reports further interact with data services components residing in Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) to fetch the data from the database