Alpha Five v11 and IIS support

June 15, 2011 Alpha Five Version 11 PreviewIIS 7 Integration

Alpha Five Application Server for

Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Services™)


Why IIS 7?

• Ubiquitous• Industrial Strength• Manageable

– Supporting tools

• Extensible– Configuration– Logging– Security– Session State

Lots of Tools

UbiquitousConfigurable

(Remote)

Extensible

Manageable

IndustrialStrength


Why Alpha Five?• Rapid

– Design– Development– Deployment

• Rich Abstractions• Multiple Web Clients• Build once & deploy on web and

mobile devices from different mobile vendors

• SQL Database Neutral• Extremely comprehensive feature

set (includes powerful reporting, charting, GIS/Mapping, scheduling,image & video support)

• Time to Market• Total Cost of Ownership

Deploy&

Test

IterateBased On

UserExperience

Design &

Develop


A Winning Combination

Alpha Five Development Environment

IIS 7 Web Server


Goals

• Tight integration with IIS 7

• Easy deployment

• Scale-able solutions

• Minimal impact on existing applications

We want to leverage the strengths of IIS 7 and play to those of Alpha Five.


Goal 1 – Tight Integration

• IIS 7 Pipeline– Security (Authentication/Authorization)– Session State– Managed Plug-ins and Handlers

• Configuration & Management– Schema Extensions– IIS Manager Extensions


ArchitectureAlpha Five Application Server & IIS 7

Content Handlers

Alpha Five Application Server

Core

Alpha Five Application Server

Core

IIS 7

Integrated

Pipeline

SecurityProviders

Session StateProvider

Alpha Five Handlers

Security/Session/

Persistent DataStorage


ConfigurationIIS Manager


ConfigurationSetting Values


ConfigurationWeb.Config Contents

<system.webServer>…

<AlphaFive.ApplicationServer><xbasicThreadTransitionLogging

enabled="true" logFile="C:\ManagedTest\logs2\Threads.log"

/><xbasicErrorLogging

enabled="true" logFile="c:\ManagedTest\logs\XBasicErrors.log"

/></AlphaFive.ApplicationServer>

…


Goal 2 – Easy Deployment

• Microsoft Web Deploy

• XCopy Deployment

• Security Publication

• Integration with .Net API:– Microsoft.Web.Administration– Microsoft.Web.Management


Application Development Life Cycle

Test

Production

Deployment

Package


Goal 3 – Highly Scaleable Solutions

• Session State (IIS 7 Providers)– Map XBasic Session to IIS 7

• Security (IIS 7 providers)– Access to Authorization, Authentication,

Membership, Role functions

• Multi-threading• Multi-process/Multi-server

– Web Gardens– Web Farms


ArchitectureWhy Session Storage is Key to Scale-ability

Session storage in folders on a single server. That’s fine if you have a single server.

Session Data

How does that work across servers? It doesn’t.

Session Data

Session Data


Scaling Web Applications with IIS 7

Single Process Web Garden

Web Farm


Goal 4 – Minimal Impact on Existing Applications

• Common Object Model for XBasic

• Map web project, server and security settings to IIS 7 XML configuration files

• Map existing functions to hide the differences in IIS 7 and the Alpha Five Web Server

• Minimize server specific user code


The View From XBasic

Context

Request Response Security Session

Context


Context


Context


Context


Context


Alpha Five Web Server IIS 7 Content Handlers

HostContext


With .Net and IIS 7 support, Alpha Five v11 fully enters the mainstream

• The current widespread solution to building web applications is the Microsoft “stack” of Windows/.Net/IIS/SQL/Visual Studio now has a new and significantly more productive option of Windows/.Net/IIS/SQL/Alpha Five

• Alpha Five v11 is a full equal to Visual Studio in terms of building .NET web applications – but the development time can realistically be cut by 5-10 times with Alpha Five

• It does not have to be an all or nothing decision - Applications can freely mix .aspx pages generated from Visual Studio with Alpha Five .a5w pages.

Technology

Alpha Five v11 and IIS support