Microsoft application server iis

Is IIS a web server or an application server? Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 4 months ago. Active 8 years, 4 months ago. Viewed 29k times. Or is it both? What is the difference between or similarity between Web and Application servers in. Improve this question. Gadam Gadam 2, 8 8 gold badges 26 26 silver badges 46 46 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Erik A. Brandstadmoen Erik A. Brandstadmoen I was trying to understand the exact nature of application servers and how web-servers and application-servers would be set up in a.

Since you say '. NET handling has been integrated All of the Web server features are now managed as standalone components which you can easily add, remove, and replace. This enables several key advantages over previous versions of IIS:.

The HTTP process activation model is available for more than just Web applications, receiving requests or messages over any protocol. Developers can leverage the modular architecture of IIS to build powerful server components that extend or replace the existing Web server features and add value to web applications hosted on IIS. NET 2. NET features including forms-based authentication, membership, session state and many others can be used for all types of content, providing a unified experience across the entire Web application.

The biggest advantages to doing this are the following:. You can also provide anonymous authentication to your website by using a specific Windows account or application pool identity instead of an IUSR account. Connect as is an option in IIS that enables you to decide which credentials you want to use to access the website. You can use either the authenticated user credentials or specific user credentials.

To understand the difference, consider the following scenario:. You have a default website that is configured to use anonymous authentication. However, your website contents are on another server, and you are using the Connect as section to access that resource through a Test domain user. When the user logs in, he is authenticated by using an IUSR account. However, the website content is accessed through the user credentials that are mentioned in Connect as section.

To put it more simply, anonymous authentication is the mechanism that is used by the website to identify a user.

But when you use this feature, the user does not have to provide any credentials. However, there might be a similar scenario in which the contents are on a network share. In such cases, you cannot use built-in accounts to access network share. Instead, you must use a specific account domain to do this. Literally, impersonation means the act of pretending to be another person. In technical terms, it is an ASP. NET security feature that provides the ability to control the identity under which application code is run.

Impersonation occurs when ASP. NET runs code in the context of an authenticated and authorized client. After the request is passed along to ASP. NET, the application code is run by using the application pool identity. NET code if the application uses anonymous authentication, and if one of the following conditions is true:.

When impersonation is enabled through IIS, it adds the following tag in the Web. To impersonate a specific user for all requests on all pages of an ASP. To implement impersonation through ASP.