Comments on: Making IIS 6.0 Play With UrlRewriting

By: Daren

Daren — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:50:48 +0000

4. Scott Watermasysk, the man who brought you .TEXT and Community Server, posts this very helpful post on a rather significant bug in .NET’s native url rewriting.

This line had two generic links but not a link to the actual post where Scott talks about the bug.

By: Mahdi Taghizadeh

Mahdi Taghizadeh — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:53:03 +0000

Wyatt, thank you for your comment on SharpLife.NET. I updated my post with a reference to your article.

By: MikeSchinkel

MikeSchinkel — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:35:57 +0000

@wwb_99: I didn't exactly miss your point regarding IIS7, I just didn't find it relevant. The fact that Microsoft has not delivered an out-of-the-box strategy for URL rewriting is telling. It shows how little importance they place on URL rewriting whereas to me URL rewriting is one of the most important functionalities a web server can offer. (BTW, though Apache offers URL rewriting out-of-the-box (with the mod_rewrite module) Apache's use of error-prone regular expressions for of URL rewriting is painful at best, dangerous at worst. I look forward to a day when we can use URI Templates for URL Rewriting.) That said, you made my point about IIS7 being too-little, too-late by saying:

"A key thing to remember is that IIS7 really is not quite out yet, even if it is included with Vista."

In 2000 I would have been really excited about IIS7 shipping on Windows 2000 Server. Today I could care less as it's clear Microsoft's development cycles are no longer meeting the needs of web developers in ways that the open-source community is.

By: wwb_99

wwb_99 — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:31:36 +0000

I think you missed a key point–IIS7 lets you use .NET HttpModules on any web application, and the HttpModules that do URL rewriting already exist. I have also heard that Microsoft will be releasing their own implementation.

A key thing to remember is that IIS7 really is not quite out yet, even if it is included with Vista. The real-deal version is part of Windows Server 2008, so I suspect the other real web hosting tools will come then.

By: MikeSchinkel

MikeSchinkel — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:38:04 +0000

@wwb_99: I have both IIS7 and Apache 2.2 on my Vista laptop. I’ve tried IIS7 and, while I would have killed for it’s feature set back in 1998/2000 today it is too little too late. And too much damage has been done from IIS6’s lack of URL rewriting. IIS7 is too cumbersome; it’s a grand design, which is typical Microsoft, but it would be better were it less elaborate.URL rewriting requires me to write a module in C#? Come on, as everything Redmond, it is over-engineered and makes things harder than they should be. And this is from a former staunch Microsoft technologies advocate. Today I’m using Apache and happily not looking back.

By: wwb_99

wwb_99 — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:40:42 +0000

@MikeSchinkel: thanks, that looks like a handy resource. And yes, you hit the nail on the head–both Apache and IIS have their place in this world and both are viable HTTP application servers with their individual strengths and weaknesses.

I do, however, thin IIS7 could tip the balance towards IIS. It manages to cover IIS’ principal weaknesses–url rewriting, non-administrative configuration via text (well, XML) files.

By: reteep

reteep — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:14:15 +0000

Don’t worry guys, IIS7 will have pretty good URL Rewriting support.

By: MikeSchinkel

MikeSchinkel — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:19:12 +0000

For those looking for a resource on URL design and rewriting check out http://welldesignedurls.org.

That said, IIS 6.0 is a very frustrating beast having given so little consideration to URL rewriting, and Apache is a very frustrating beast in that one tiny misplaced character in the httpd.conf file can bring the server crashing down rather than running but cleanly reporting the error. In reality both have significant strengths and both have significant failings.

By: DirectAttack

DirectAttack — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:32:03 +0000

It’s not about technology is about how you use it because nor Apache nor IIS are complete pieces of c*ap. It all comes down to the preference of the decision maker or a company that puts the product on the market.

At the end nothing FREE is ever completely free. Selling software or services or however you wanna call it is one the same thing. Programmers, salesmen, marketing people… they all have to eat.

By: irrevelent linux

irrevelent linux — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 02:49:01 +0000

Amen Apache Killer. Stop drinking the kool-aid, and think for yourself Dr.. Stats dont lie player, if you want to made considerate money, Microsoft is the place to be. Just go ask the PHP developers in the unemployment line.