Question

Here there is a good explanation pointing the difference between Classic x Integrated mode in IIS:

https://help.maximumasp.com/KB/a657/explanation-of-classic-vs-integrated-mode-in-iis-7x.aspx

Also here, an explanation of ISAPI Extension:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms525172(v=vs.90).aspx

My question is:
Is the application I am developing (an Asp.Net MVC application) an ISAPI extension?
I am asking that because it is not very clear to me.

In addition, from the first link:

When using classic mode the server uses two piplines to handle requests, one for native code and the other for managed code. In this mode the application doesn’t take full advantage of everything IIS 7.X has to offer.

Integrated mode handles all requests through a unified pipeline for IIS and is tightly integrated with ASP.NET through that same pipeline.
ASP.NET sees every relevant request and manipulates things along the way rather than acting as an external plugin

1. What king of advantages are Integrated mode to offer?

From the second link:

IIS uses the virtual location of the DLL file in the file system to map the ISAPI extension into the URL namespace that is served by IIS

Let´s say a request arives in IIS: “http://localhost”.

1. What would be that URL namespace that IIS serves? And where is set the virtual location of the DLL?

Sorry for those newby question. I am a new with Windows development so I am having a hard time to understand those features.

Answer 1

If you are writing an asp.net mvc you do not need to develop an isapi extension as mvc is handled by asp.net part of iis if you enable it. As part of IIS manager you can look at the mappings for file extensions. The .dll’s are installed in the windows system either 32 or 64 depending on which memory model windows is using.

Site URL’s are mapped to websites local host gets mapped to c:\inetpub\wwwroot