BillS IIS Blog

Web Farm Framework 2 now available for free download

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:27:39 GMT

Yesterday we shipped another awesome piece of software, this time for those who make their living running groups of Web servers. Web Farm Framework is a free, fully supported, Microsoft product. Web Farm Framework enables you to automate the installation and configuration of platform components across your cluster, and also makes it easy to synchronize content, configuration and other resources associated with your ASP.NET or PHP applications.

Web Farm Framework 2 now supports integration with hardware load balancers, and enables you to orchestrate updates across your servers so that your site/application is never down or unavailable to customers . For example, Web Farm Framework can automatically pull servers one-at-a-time out of the load balancer rotation, update them, and then inject them back into rotation.

In the final release we fixed a ton of bugs based on user feedback and also added a few cool new features, including:

Workflow Builder can be used to define and schedule custom tasks that can be run on all servers in the farm. The tasks can be scheduled to run periodically or can be started manually by an administrator. An example of such task could be a web deploy command to partially sync web site content.
Windows Credential Store support enables you to store the administrator credentials used for server provisioning in a secure Windows Credential Store. This enables an added layer of security when dealing with credentials with the Web Farm Framework.
Third party load balancers support via Web Farm Framework extensibility. It is now possible to configure the Web Farm Framework to integrate with hardware load balancers instead of relying on the (free) IIS Application Request Routing module.
Improved support for advanced Web Deploy operations. More Web Deploy features can now be used with the Web Farm Framework for advanced deployment scenarios.
Improved support for syncing large amount of files. Several issues related to syncing large amounts of files across web farm nodes have been fixed between the beta and today’s release.

The team has posted a bunch of articles on how to use Web Farm Framework, here are a few pointers for more info:

Visit the below links to learn more about the Web Farm Framework 2.0 release:

Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework
Download the Web Farm Framework V2 Release
Read the Web Farm Framework 2.0 Documentation
Web Farm Framework Forum (the team monitors this so ask your questions here)

Now available: WebMatrix

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:00:54 GMT

WebMatrix is now available in final release form. :)

What is WebMatrix?

I first posted at the debut of WebMatrix beta back in July, describing WebMatrix as a complete Web development stack for pragmatic developers. WebMatrix elegantly integrates a Web server (IIS Express), database (SQL Compact) and programming frameworks (ASP.NET and PHP) into a single, integrated experience.

Learn More and See it in Action

You can learn more and see it in action on the WebMatrix home page. A list of some of the cool features is also online. Laurence Moroney also wrote a great tutorial for those who are new to Web development and want to get started with WebMatrix.

WebMatrix makes it very easy to start a Web site using open source, including some of the most popular applications available like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, Umbraco, ScrewTurn Wiki, and BlogEngine.NET.

Join the WebMatrix Launch Event

Today at 12:30 EST we’ll be live streaming from CodeMesh the launch of WebMatrix. If you missed the event, on demand videos and post-launch interviews are available at the launch site.

More to come…

The news is just starting to pour in on launch day, one of my favorites is Jack into the WebMatrix. ;)

WebMatrix was a labor of love… it is the kind of Web development tool I would have loved to have 15 years ago when I started Web development, and it will only get better from here. The team behind it is committed to excellence, passionate about Web development and a bunch of hard working folks. WebMatrix started one year ago this month…and it is awesome to see how much was accomplished in just one year. And it is just the beginning…while we’re celebrating today, we’ll be starting v2 tomorrow.

Today marks not only the launch of WebMatrix, but a series of updates to the Microsoft Web Platform my team builds. Stay tuned, I’ll be blogging more today and throughout the coming week as we launch a ton of exciting new software for the Web.

Final beta releases of WebMatrix and MVC3 now available!

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:58:15 GMT

I just got off stage at TechEd Europe in Berlin where I announced the availability of the final beta of WebMatrix and MVC 3! What a blast! If you haven’t checked out WebMatrix or MVC 3 yet, now is a great time to do it.

WebMatrix Beta 3

I had the pleasure of giving the “Lap Around WebMatrix” talk and show off a bunch of new features available in this, the last beta for v1. It is amazing to think that development really started in earnest just this year, the first beta was just a few months ago and here we are nearing feature complete. My hat is off to the team for innovating so quickly and working so hard to bring such an awesome product to market. My talk was almost all demos, but here are some highlights:

You can download beta 3 of WebMatrix and learn more about the product here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix
WebMatrix beta 3 features enhanced publishing support including
- Import publishing profile from XML (hosting providers can now send you a pre-configured account!)
- Application compatibility checks for .NET version, PHP and MySQL compatibility
- Download from hosting server – you can now sync your Web site both ways, from local development to server and from server back to local development! (this is super cool)
The updated ASP.NET Web Pages now includes support for NuGet, an open source packaging and distribution system for libraries and helpers
- Browse to http://localhost/_admin to activate your ASP.NET Web Pages control panel, browse NuGet modules and install them
- There are now almost a dozen new helpers for ASP.NET Web Pages including support for PayPal, Twitter, Facebook and more!
The built-in templates are now richer with more functionality
Enhanced configuration settings allow you to choose and activate specific ASP.NET and PHP versions
The built-in editor now supports HTML tag completion and better formatting
and much, much more!

Here are a few pics:

The Welcome Screen

WebMatrix can sync files and database from your desktop to server and back:

WebMatrix checks compatibility of your site on the server and can even set the right version of .NET Framework for you.

The new ASP.NET Web Pages panel makes it easy to find and install helpers that make Web development easier than ever before. Already included are helpers for twitter, paypal, facebook, odata and more! Just browse to http://localhost/_admin on any ASP.NET Web Page site to activate the panel – no install required!

MVC 3 Release Candidate

MVC 3 now includes Razor tooling support inside Visual Studio for both Razor-based views as well as ASP.NET Web Pages. Install MVC 3 with a new update to WebPI v3 beta now, and look for a blog post from ScottGu and Phil Haack coming soon. To tide you over, here are some image previews of Razor tooling in VS:

File –> New –> Web Site

Content, Empty, Layout and Web Page in “Add New Item” dialog

IIS Media Services 4 released

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 19:41:00 GMT

Last week my team delivered another amazing update to IIS Media Services with the announcement of general availability of our 4th major release.

IIS Media Services is a free and completely modern way to deliver streaming video on the Web. It is so popular that some of the biggest video events on the Web choose IIS Media Services to deliver their content, including the Vancouver olympics earlier this year as well as Sunday Night Football here in the United States.

IIS Media Services delivers amazing HD content that plays back smooth on Mac OSX, Windows and with the new release also on the iPhone and iPad. New advanced capabilities are also available for iOS devices, including:

Live DVR – Pause, Rewind, Seek
Archiving – saves the live content for DVR use or later on-demand playback
Archive Segmentation – breaks a long broadcast archive into shorter clips for storage purposes
AES Encryption – keeps your content safe while streaming
B-frame support – provides better picture quality
Compatibility mode for iOS3 devices

IIS Media Services can stream on-demand content as well as Live video with incredibly low latency with updates pushed from origin to endpoint in as low as 2 seconds!

The experience is so incredible that our partner CTV, who delivered the on-demand content for the Olympics, just won a Gemini Award for their work (for those not familiar with this award, it is the equivalent of the Emmy's here in the United States). Here is what the judges said:

To do so, the team created an immersive, HD-quality live streaming player which enabled Canadians to pause, replay and rewind the live broadcast while being guided to key moments in time through an interactive and data-embedded video player. This live video player was key to the website’s overwhelming success. In the period from February 12th to 28th, the website delivered record results for interactive and online viewing in Canada: 215 million page views to 12.3 million unique visitors, with 28.5 million videos viewed.

You can download IIS Media Services for free on the http://iis.net/media web site.

Web Farm Framework 2.0 beta released!

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:09:04 GMT

Last week my team released a super powerful update to our Web Farm Framework project aimed at dramatically simplifying the complexity of managing a Web farm (many computers running one or more Web sites).

Web Farm Framework 2.0 (WFF) allows users to not only setup groups of servers and define routing rules using the built-in routing and load balancing support in ARR, but extends the management support to include many new powerful experiences, including:

Automatic platform setup and provisioning of new nodes

WFF integrates with Web Platform Installer and will automatically install all the required components to mirror the master node

Application replication and synchronization across the Web server farm

WFF integrates with Web Deploy and can automatically sync all Web site content, configuration and other dependencies across the farm

Zero-downtime deployment

WFF can do rolling upgrades of nodes in the farm without impacting overall service uptime

Built-in health monitoring, logging and trace information for the entire farm
Completely extensible model for building custom providers for the Web farm framework

Aggregate log files, performance counters, event log data, or take custom actions

Read more about Web Farm Framework and see screen shots on Ruslan’s blog post. Documentation for the beta is available on the learn.iis.net site. Download Web Farm Framework with Web PI. Join the Web Farm Framework forum to give feedback, ask questions and get help.

How to Install IIS7 on Windows XP

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:31:14 GMT

Ever since IIS7 shipped in Vista I’ve been asked the question: how can I install it on Windows XP? Until now, that hasn’t been possible. With the recent release of WebMatrix, you can now install IIS Developer Express – which is based on the latest IIS7x codebase - on any supported Windows operating system including Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1+, Windows XP SP3+, Windows Server 2003 SP2+, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2.

IIS Developer Express supports all of the latest IIS7 modules, including URL Rewrite, FastCGI, etc. It support Classic ASP, PHP and of course ASP.NET development, including integrated pipeline.

WebMatrix provides more than just the IIS7x Web server, it also includes a lightweight tool for Web development, an embedded database, built-in SEO reporting and optimization and the new simplified syntax – Razor - for building ASP.NET Web pages.

For more information on how to get started with WebMatrix, visit the Learn page, read about top Features, and get oriented with the new Workspaces inside the tool. Then Download WebMatrix today and try it out!

Announcing WebMatrix – a small, simple and seamless stack for Web developers

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 21:54:39 GMT

Today my team launched an exciting new project called WebMatrix.

Seamless, small and best of all free, WebMatrix includes a complete Web development stack that installs in minutes and elegantly integrates a Web server, database and programming frameworks into a single, integrated experience.

Use WebMatrix to streamline the way you code, test, and deploy your own ASP.NET and PHP Web site, or start a new site using the world’s most popular open source apps like DotNetNuke, Umbraco, WordPress, or Joomla.

WebMatrix is the easiest way to learn Web development and makes it simple to build and publish Web sites on the internet. Start with Web standards including HTML, CSS and JavaScript and then connect to a database or add in dynamic server code using the new simplified Razor syntax to build ASP.NET web pages simply and efficiently.

WebMatrix includes IIS Developer Express, a built-in Web server that shares the same code base that ships in Windows Server and powers some of the world’s biggest Web sites. IIS Developer Express has been fine tuned to work specifically for developer environments, supports all of the key features of the full version of IIS, without the complexity of a full Web server.

Using a database has never been easier! WebMatrix includes a small, embedded database with SQL Server Compact that can live with your Web site code and content. Use it to start building your next Web site and when you’re ready to publish simply copy the database file from your computer to any Web server, or seamlessly migrate the data to SQL Server when you’re ready for high-volume traffic.

With WebMatrix on your desktop, you’re using the same powerful Web server, database engine and frameworks that your Web site on the internet uses, which makes the transition from development to production smooth and seamless. As your Web development needs grow, WebMatrix provides a seamless on-ramp to Microsoft’s professional tools and servers including Visual Studio, ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server.

Learn more about WebMatrix on the home page and read about the cool new features available to try out today. Download WebMatrix today and check it out!

Lots of new software for IIS, ASP.NET, AJAX and PHP this week

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Wow, what a week of innovation for the Microsoft Web Platform. This week we released a ton of new software which, if you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out. Here is a quick overview:

IIS Search Engine Optimization v1 final release!

The IIS team shipped the final release of IIS SEO toolkit which makes it easier to optimize your Website for search engines. It acts like a mini-search engine on your computer, scans your site and then provides useful tips for how to improve the relevance of your site to search engines. This tool is now out of beta and available for download through Web PI.

ASP.NET MVC 2 beta!

The ASP.NET team has been hard at work on the second release of MVC, which is now available to beta test. Phil has a great blog post on the release with links to the download page, readme notes and the source code. There are a bunch of new features in MVC 2 including AsyncController, expression based helpers, improvements with client validation, all new areas support, and more. Read more on Phil’s blog.

ASP.NET AJAX Library beta!

The ASP.NET AJAX team also has some exciting news with the release of the ASP.NET AJAX Library beta. James has a terrific blog post with the news This is the first project accepted into the new CodePlex Foundation! (more on that later) The ASP.NET AJAX Library has a new portal at www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary with tutorials, samples, and more. Read James’ post about the news and check it out!

IIS Application Request Router 2 final release!

The IIS team also released the final version of the IIS Application Request Router v2. This is a super powerful module that provides routing and load balancing capabilities for Windows and IIS. It makes it easy to create and manage an entire cluster of Web servers. Mai-lan has a lot of info on the release in her blog post and you can download ARR v2 using Web PI today.

PHP WinCache module final release - faster PHP on Windows!

The PHP team announced today the final release of the Windows Cache Extension for PHP, or WinCache for short, which makes PHP run much, much faster on Windows. The iBuildings guys released a benchmark showing how the WinCache extension speeds up PHP by as much as 2x over standard PHP. The other exciting part of this announcement is that the sources for the extension are now available under an open source BSD license and the source code is maintained and host on http://pecl.php.net/packages/wincache/ If you install PHP using Web PI, you automatically get WinCache.

IIS 7.5 Launched with Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:02:17 GMT

Since the Windows 2008 Server launch last March, the IIS team has shipped a bunch of new features that plug-in to IIS7 and in parallel worked on IIS 7.5, launching today in the Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 release.

IIS 7.5 includes many bug fixes, improvements and new features, and is definitely worth grabbing. If you haven’t tried IIS7 yet, check out the many reasons to try it. If you’re already using IIS7 and want to know what’s new in IIS 7.5, Mai-lan just posted an update to her blog with a nice summary. Note: the IIS Extensions which are not already included in IIS 7.5 will install and work on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2!

ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 are here!

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:56:07 GMT

The ASP.NET and Web tools for Visual Studio teams have been cranking away on this release all year long and we’re excited to launch Beta 2 today! MSDN subscribers can download it today…it will be available for everyone on Wednesday.

There are a ton of new features in this release, this MSDN page gives a good overview. Here are some highlights for Web developers:

Numerous improvements to Web Forms including more control over viewstate, meta tag control, new browser support, routing support for clean URLs, more control over HTML with FormView and ListView controls, filtering support in data source controls, better Web standards support and accessibility
New Dynamic Data features including a RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven site, automatic validation, field template support for GridView and DetailsView controls.
Visual Studio has undergone a face lift and now supports simpler, code optimized view, multi-mon support, enhanced multi-targeting and more..
Visual Web Developer has better support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript including auto-completion for tag names, IntelliSense for HTML and Jscript snippets, and more…
Visual Studio also natively supports the Web Deployment Tool, a powerful new packaging and deployment model for Web applications. Check out Vishal’s blog (PM for these features) for a bunch more info on this as well.
Auto-start Web Applications
And much more…

All said this is an impressive release and now is a great time to try it out and provide your feedback!

Microsoft Ajax Library Preview 6

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:13:28 GMT

The ASP.NET team has been cranking away on more AJAX goodness…this time with a significant update to the Microsoft Ajax Library – Preview 6. This update includes updates to our client-side AJAX library that can be used with any type of Web application as well as deep support within ASP.NET for AJAX across ASP.NET 2.0, 3.5 and 4.0…for both Web Forms and MVC style projects.

In addition to the updated AJAX support, the team is shipping a cool new AJAX minifier tool which reduces the size of your JavaScript files to improve performance.

You can download the release from the CodePlex project and read more information on the team blogs below:

Scott – Announcing Microsoft Ajax Library…
Bertrand – Entirely unobtrusive and imperative templates…
James – How the Script Loader…will make your life wonderful

Also check out the Channel9 interview with Stephen Walther on the new release! Enjoy ~

IIS Media Services 3.0 Released!

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:26:58 GMT

IIS Media Services 3.0 has been released and is now available as a free download for Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2! Chris Knowlton has a comprehensive post on the release and all the details, here is a quick summary:

IIS Media Services, an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform, delivers true HD (720p+) streaming and provides real-time logging to measure media investments. By offering a complete media delivery platform together with a traditional Web server, rich dynamic Web sites can now be managed and administered from a single Web platform. IIS Media Services offers the highest quality streaming media experience available on the Web.

Server Features:

With this release, the key elements of the IIS media server platform now include:

· Smooth Streaming, adaptive streaming of media over HTTP

· Live Smooth Streaming, for live adaptive streaming of broadcast events

· Bit Rate Throttling, meters the speed that media is delivered to a player

· Web Playlists, secure sequencing of media content

· Advanced Logging, with real-time client- and server-side logging

· Application Request Routing (ARR), providing HTTP proxying and caching

Client / SDK Features:

We have also released a Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, which allows developers to easily create Smooth Streaming experiences using Silverlight. Supported features include PlayReady, DVR controls, instant replay, slow motion, multiple camera angles, alternate audio tracks, content protection, ad integration, in-stream data feeds, and more.

Download IIS Media Services today, and let us know what you think in our Forum.

Available Jobs: I’m looking for an AWESOME design engineer

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:13:00 GMT

I am looking for a super-star designer, to work full time @ Microsoft and report directly to me. This position will oversee the design architecture and visual branding of some of the most important visual assets of the Microsoft Web Platform. I am looking for an experienced, senior designer who can work in a dynamic team environment and do it all, from prototyping new looks and experiences to managing design-related contractor or vendor resources as well as someone who doesn’t mind rolling up their sleeves when necessary to implement the nitty-gritty details in HTML and CSS for large traffic sites.

I’m looking for someone who can infuse our products with an attractive and compelling design that speaks to simplicity, ease-of-use and great aesthetics. In this position you will oversee the visual design for both the user interface of some of our key products as well as the design for our high traffic community sites http://www.iis.net and http://www.asp.net. You will have the opportunity to work directly with developers, program managers, testers and product management across all of my teams including IIS, ASP.NET, and Visual Web Developer Express.

If you’re interested in applying, send me your resume and a link to your portfolio for review. thanks!

Error connecting to SQL Server from Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2 with ASP.NET

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:41:00 GMT

Just ran into this and thought I’d share. If you are trying to connect to a "user instance" of SQL Server from your Web application running on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 and you’re getting a message that looks like this:

Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to failure in retrieving the user's local application data path. Please make sure the user has a local user profile on the computer. The connection will be closed.

I can probably help you out.

Note: this error only happens if you have User Instance=true in your connection string. The IIS team made a change to the default identity of the worker process. Starting with IIS 7.5, Application Pools run with a unique identity based on the Application Pool name, rather than NetworkService – the default identity for IIS6 and IIS7. The primary reason for this change is to increase the security of IIS and Application Pools by default, providing a much better sandbox between Applications and other Windows services by default.

Unfortunately, the new identity does not have a user profile, and as you can see from the error, this causes the SqlClient data stack to fail. There are a few things you can do to "fix" this error: 1) switch back to NetworkService 2) switch to a user account that has a local profile (like a real user / domain user account). To do that, fire open IIS Manager and browse to Application Pools node for your computer. Click on the AppPool for the application you are trying to run and select the “Advanced Settings” task (in yellow on right). Select identity and choose NetworkService as a built-in account, or select “Custom account” and type in the user/password.

If you’re a command-line person, you can do it this way (all on one line):

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe set config  
-section:system.applicationHost/applicationPools /[name='YOUR_APPPPOOL_NAME_HERE'].processModel.identityType:"NetworkService"  
/commit:apphost

A big day for Web pros: WebsiteSpark, Web PI and more!

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:11:43 GMT

Today we’re launching a number of really cool things for Web developers.

WebsiteSpark

WebsiteSpark is a program designed to jumpstart Web development for individuals or small companies who make a living on the Web. The program is free to join and runs for three years with no cost obligations other than a $100 program fee, payable on exit. What is in it for you?

Windows Web Server 2008 R2 – 4 processor licenses for production use!
SQL Server 2008 – 4 processor licenses for production use!
Expression Studio 3 – 1 license including Expression Web, Blend and Sketchflow
Expression Web – 2 licenses
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition – 3 licenses
DotNetPanel control panel (to manage your servers, and allow your customers to manage their site!)

Beyond just software you also get free support, training and Microsoft will even help drive business your way. Anyone can join as long as 1) you build web sites or applications for other people and 2) your company has less than 10 employees. If you meet these requirements, sign-up today! As part of the sign-up process you will need a referral code. Contact me if you need a code, I’d be happy to sponsor you into the program! Read more about the program on the WebsiteSpark portal.

Web Platform Installer 2

I’m also happy to announce that the Web Platform Installer 2.0 is available in final release form! The Web Platform Installer (sometimes called Web PI) makes it easy to install the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform including IIS, ASP.NET, Visual Web Developer, SQL Express and more! New for the final release, we’ve fixed many bugs, improved usability, added new products including Expression Web, Azure Tools and the latest releases also being announced today. We’re also launching WebPI in 9 different languages and allow users around the world to access the Web Platform in their regional language. Look for more components of the Microsoft Web Platform to be added to Web PI v2 over time. Web PI also makes it super easy to install any of the Web applications in the Windows Web App Gallery. Web PI can also now install both PHP and MySQL for applications that require it. Install Web PI today!

Trivia: since launching the Windows Web Application Gallery at MIX in March 2009 – just 5 months ago – Web PI has installed more than 840,000 applications! Do you have a killer Web application just waiting to be discovered by the masses? Want Microsoft to drive users to your community? Submit your Web app to the gallery today!

Web Deployment Tool

The IIS team just released the final 1.0 version of the Web Deployment Tool, a super powerful deployment technology that you are going to see a lot of going forward. It is like a swiss army knife for Web masters. It can migrate sites or entire servers from IIS6 to IIS7. It can synchronize Web sites or applications between multiple servers. You can package a Web site or application and then push it out to your entire server farm. It knows how to not only replicate content, but also configuration, databases, COM dll, GAC assemblies, certificates, ACLs, and a whole lot more. After about three years of development I’m super excited to see this thing in final release form. It is already being integrated into Visual Studio 2010 and from there you’ll be able to not only build but also package and deploy your applications with just a few clicks of the mouse. Other teams around Microsoft are picking this thing up and integrating it as well, so you definitely want to get up to speed with this tool. Download it today!!

Database Manager 1.0

The IIS team just released the 1.0 version of Database Manager, and IIS Manager extension that makes it super easy to manage your database, local or remote, from within the IIS Manager tool. This thing rocks! It supports SQL Server and MySQL and is one powerful tool, and completely free. Check it out!

Search Engine Optimization Toolkit – Beta 2

The IIS team also announced the released the beta 2 of the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit, another IIS Manager extension that makes it possible to learn things about your site you can’t find anywhere else. It crawls your Web site, local or remote, and reports on dozens of well known but hard to discover issues that cause your site to be less relevant to search engines. This version includes many bugs fixes and new features over the previous release, definitely check it out and send feedback to the team on the forums.

Application Request Routing 2 – Release Candidate

The IIS team is also releasing a Release Candidate of the 2.0 version of the Application Request Routing extension for IIS7/IIS7.5, which provides built-in routing, load balancing, proxying and caching support on the IIS platform. This release includes an all-new disk cache option, bug fixes and performance improvements. Read more about the release in the learn portal. This powerful extension is available for free, download it today!

Microsoft Launches New Open Source CodePlex Foundation

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:54:25 GMT

Microsoft’s strategy with open source has evolved over the past several years as we strive to make Windows the platform of choice for customers. My team has participated in that process first hand, we’ve worked hard with the PHP community to ensure PHP runs great on Windows, integrated PHP installation into the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, and engaged some of the most popular PHP applications like WordPress, Drupal, and SugarCRM to ensure customers have a great experience running these applications on Windows and IIS. We’ve also worked closely with the jQuery project to make it a natural part of building applications with ASP.NET.

Today I am happy to be a part of the announcement that Microsoft is sponsoring an open source foundation aptly named CodePlex Foundation, whose mission is to “enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities”. I believe the foundation will make it easier for Microsoft and other commercial software companies to participate in open source. You can read more about the announcement in my interview with Peter Galli on Port25 and learn more about the foundation at http://codeplex.org.

The CodePlex Foundation is a completely separate organization from Microsoft. To help form the foundation, we have formed an interim board of directors comprised of three Microsoft employees and three non-Microsoft employees, and elected Sam Ramji as the President of the Board. Microsoft has also donated $1 million US dollars to help the foundation get started and is transferring the use rights to the “CodePlex” term, along with the codeplex.org domain name to the CodePlex Foundation.

I feel lucky to be a part of the interim board of directors as we spend the next 100 days working together with the board of advisors, partners and you to structure how the foundation will work. We don’t have all of the answers and need your help to make it a success. You can read more about how to participate here: http://codeplex.org/participate.aspx

As always, I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions about the new foundation.

New Experiences @MIX from the Microsoft Web Platform

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:19:49 GMT

Today is a BIG day for the Microsoft Web Platform and a BIG day for the WEB. I’m down in Las Vegas at MIX and I just got off stage from the keynote where I demo’d just one of the many exciting and cool new things that make the Microsoft Web Platform better than ever. For example:

Using the new Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta, you can now download and install all of the technologies that make up the Microsoft Web Platform, and some of the world’s most popular Web applications, in one simple tool.
With the new Windows Web App Gallery, you can now discover world-class ASP.NET and PHP applications, read reviews from the community, and submit your own comments, as well as launch installation of an application in one click right from the browser.
With IIS Media Services, a free addition to the IIS7 Web server, you can now provide high definition audio and video streams LIVE and on demand.
With the final release of ASP.NET MVC 1.0, you can now build applications in the popular Modal-View-Controller paradigm, have complete control over your HTML and CSS, and build inherently testable applications
With the upcoming Visual Studio 10 release, we announced you can now package and deploy applications from right within the Visual Studio development environment, including support for multiple deployment configuration targets
In conjunction with the Silverlight 3 release, we’re also shipping a beta of Silverlight Tools 3, a Visual Studio development environment for building Silverlight Applications.
The IIS team is also introducing 10 new IIS7 extensions which extend the capabilities of the already powerful Web server to do things like:

Built-in Database management support, integrated with IIS Manager
Application Request Routing (ARR v2 beta) which includes advanced routing and load balancing capabilities, built-in to IIS7, including all-new proxy/cache support
Brand new content publishing features with FTP 7.5 and WebDAV 7.5
The final release of the IIS7 PowerShell support for managing the Web server from the command line using PowerShell
Web server migration, Web farm synchronization and application packaging and deployment support using the release candidate version of the Web Deployment tool.

With Commerce Server 2009, you can now more easily deploy enterprise-grade commerce-enabled sites using built-in SharePoint support.

All said, this is an amazing amount of innovation and I’m very proud of my team and the many hours they put into creating these very compelling new experiences. Try it out today, and tell us what you think!

More Tips and Troubleshooting Help for Classic ASP Developers

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:10:18 GMT

Back in May of 2007 I posted a tips for Classic ASP developers post which has since received more than 50 comments and 85,000 views. Robert McMurray just posted a set of fabulous tutorials for Classic ASP developers. If you’re out there and having issues with Classic ASP and IIS7 and need some help, you’re not alone! Read these articles to get help:

Classic ASP is not installed by default on IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5

In IIS 7.0 and 7.5, the classic version of ASP is not installed by default. Because of this, you might see HTTP 404 errors when you try to browse to an ASP page on your server, or you might see the source code for your ASP page displayed in your browser window ...

Using Classic ASP with Microsoft Access Databases on IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5

Note: Microsoft Access databases have been popular for many years with developers who use Active Server Pages (ASP) for small-scale applications, but Microsoft Access databases are not designed for scalability, therefore Access databases should only be used ...

Classic ASP script error messages are no longer shown in a Web browser by default

In earlier versions of IIS, error messages from classic ASP scripts were sent to a Web browser, by default. Because these error messages might reveal sensitive information to malicious users, IIS 7.0 disables this feature by default. When your classic ASP ...

Using Failed Request Tracing to troubleshoot Classic ASP errors

One of the great troubleshooting features that is built in to IIS 7.0 is Failed Request Tracing, which lets you configure tracing rules on your server that will create detailed troubleshooting log files for custom failure conditions that you define. For example ...

Classic ASP parent paths are disabled by default

Classic ASP Parent Paths let developers use relative addresses that contain ".." in the paths to files or folders. For example, the following code excerpt illustrates an ASP page that maps a parent path: % Response.Write Server.MapPath("../example.asp")%> ...

APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH Server Variable on Windows Vista RTM

The original release of IIS 7.0 that shipped with Windows Vista returned a different value for the APPL_PHYSICAL_PATH server variable than that which was returned by previous

IIS7 request routing and load balancing module released!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:06:29 GMT

The Application Request Router (ARR) has reached final release and is now available as a free, fully-supported download for IIS7! ARR enables Web server administrators and hosting providers and to increase Web application reliability and scalability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. With ARR, administrators can optimize resource utilization for application servers to reduce management costs for Web farms and shared hosting environments. Read more about the key scenarios and features of ARR on the IIS.net/extension site.

For more information on the ARR release, including new features just added as well as links to documentation and how-to get started, see Won’s blog post (Won ran the ARR project and is the Program Manager for the feature team).

Download ARR v1 today! You can download ARR, and all of the other cool IIS7 extensions, with the Web Platform Installer (Web PI). Web PI has been updated to include the ARR release and makes it super easy to install the entire platform – IIS, ASP.NET, SQL Express and even our development tools like Visual Web Developer Express. Web PI is always up to date with the latest new features and fixes for all the technologies that make up the Microsoft Web Platform. You can also find direct download links for X86 and x64 on Won’s blog post, if you prefer.

ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate build available now!

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 05:30:39 GMT

The ASP.NET team just released the near-final build of ASP.NET MVC! Download it today! The tools team added a ton of new features in this release that you’ll want to check out – ScottGu outlines all of the new features and improvements in his gigantic post http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/01/27/asp-net-mvc-1-0-release-candidate-now-available.aspx

Working with the ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer tools team is a new adventure for me and I’ve been super impressed with the people and the products they are cranking out. MVC in particular is a very impressive project that offers a powerful alternative to the traditional ASP.NET webforms model of development. If you haven’t checked out ASP.NET before, or haven’t had time to look at MVC, now is a great time to do it. You’ll want to start with the following links: