Introducing Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0

icrosoft recently rolled out its next-generation operating system (OS), Windows Vista. One of the core Vista components is a new version of Microsoft's web server—Internet Information Services version 7.0 (IIS 7.0). IIS 7.0 will also be part of Windows Server "Longhorn", which is expected to ship in mid 2007. This article provides a developer-centric look at IIS 7.0.

IIS in Recent Times
If you think back a few years to IIS 5.0, the future for Microsoft's web server looked rather bleak, because network-savvy worms such as Nimda, Code Red, Code Red II, and their variants were affecting thousands of computers worldwide, and rapidly damaging IIS's reputation. Microsoft introduced the IIS lockdown tool to combat these exploits and, with the release of IIS 6.0, made "locked down" mode settings the default at installation, which helped minimize such security problems, and helped IIS 6.0 recapture a major part of trust that IIS 5.0 lost. No major security disasters have been reported since the release of IIS 6.0.