IIS7 at Microsoft Technology Summit

Carlos and I spoke at the Microsoft Technology Summit yesterday, a conference dedicated to influential influencers who are experts in alternative platforms.  It was a really fun talk as we were able to show off how IIS7 provides a very extensive public extensibility model for adding, removing and replacing any IIS7 feature, on top of which the IIS team built the IIS product itself. 

I showed off the new IIS7 modular architecture, and the more than 40 components that can be added or removed independently.   Carlos showed off how to build a SQL logging module in 40 lines of code using .NET extensibility, which was really impressive.  I showed off the traditional DirListModule demo, and how easy it is to xcopy deploy a new managed module as part of your site that can replace the built-in IIS directory listing module.   

While we were on the topic of modularity, I announced the new FastCGI module for IIS, which we were excited to announce will now be included in Longhorn Server and Vista SP1.  I demonstrated how using it can double performance of the QDig application and as part of that demo I also showed off the dynamic output cache can provide blazing fast kernel mode caching of PHP content.  I also demo'd the use of ASP.NET forms authentication for the PHP app, which unfortunately due to my configuration error, didn't work the first time (though I fixed it while Carlos went on with the next demo and showed them later that it did in fact work once I stopped fat-fingering config. :)). 

Carlos then went on to show how easy it is to extend IIS7 configuration, including simple XML-based section extensibility and encryption support.  He was then able to use the built-in command line, scripting, and .NET APIs to read and write to his custom configuration section (in this case, a connection string for his SQL Logging module) which was really powerful.

Last, Carlos showed off the admin tool, and how powerful the UI extensibility story is for IIS.  This is an area I'm always completely blown away by, everytime I see Carlos demo it.  He showed off 4-5 modules he has built that demonstrate nativagation tree extensibility, action pane extensibility, feature extensibility with some really compelling features including the IIS Reports module, and the Most Recently Used module (which comes with source).   

The response so far has been very positive.  Channy Yun wrote up his thoughts on the PHP on IIS7 demo, including a youtube video of it in action.   Travis Swicegood also appreciated the improved PHP support.  Ben Galbraith wrote up an extensive write-up of the entire presentation and summarized with my favorite quote so far:

I walked away fairly impressed with this one. Who doesn’t love Apache, but IIS7 seems to trump it pretty handily in both configurability, manageability, and extensibility 

I couldn't have said it better myself. :)