Publishing applications or websites is easy with Microsoft IIS. You don't need external software or complicated tutorials involving command lines and editing configuration files. On other hand, sometimes the troubleshooter needs a high knowledge of Windows Server, Registry, and tools to debug the application. If you need to host non-Microsoft technology as PHP pages or have a low budget, I recommend IIS equivalent software as Apache.
A big advantage that we use all the time is reviewing the logs that automatically get generated in IIS. It has helped us troubleshoot various problems in our applications over the years.
IIS integrates really well with Visual Studio and TFS. We are able to quickly deploy new applications and changes to applications when requested by the business.
IIS has proven that it is easy to configure and maintain with minimal effort.
Easy to use: The simplicity of its programming language allows fast learning. Visual environment to generate complex code.
Robust: A fall of the system will not be a problem. Never again will information of the transactions in progress be lost. Never more messages lost.
Connect to the world: The most popular connection is possible to implement quickly. FTP, File folder, TCP, SMPT, REST.... all method are ready to use. Only define "where" and "how"
Given that Ensemble and Cache are one of if not the only true fully object orientated database/development technologies for massive transactional data systems its customizability is extensive and it just comes down to the creativity of the developer to get the products to pretty much do whatever they want to do with it. However, this is not necessarily obvious to newcomers to the technology.
The developer community could do with greater participation from the software developers/application specialists and engineers within InterSystems.
More extensive documentation and greater access to proven working solutions particularly in the realm of some of the lesser known or new and upcoming technologies.
We have no intention to replace all applications running on top of the IIS platform. Not all applications support other platforms and not all support staff are skilled in Linux/Apache platform support. Whereas IIS may not be the best performing or most secure web platform available, for the aforementioned reasons, it is impossible not to continue use of this product.
As I've mentioned earlier, Microsoft IIS is very simple and easy to use. The user interface is a little bit overloaded with a huge number of different options, but once you have a little clue of what you are doing and what you need - no issues at all.
ARR (application request routing) in Microsoft IIS Server enables the web-admins to increase the web app reliability and availability through the rule based routing and load balancing of HTTP requests which in turn provides highly available server. IIS 7.0 Manager also provides kernel as well as user mode caching for faster performance and in case if the server fails, the IIS server has good amount of details logged in its log files which help understand and debug the cause quickly. Load balancing facilitates IIS server to fight against availability issues.
In my experience, I have never had significant issues with IIS performance. Sometimes I've experienced issues with loading time, but it is mostly related to the web site code. However Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing free cloud services with very limited resources, and in that scenario, "heavy" websites on IIS could be the issue. In other situations - performance is good.
As mentioned earlier there is so much documentation or guides or stack overflow questions out there that someone will have faced the same or very similar scenario to what you are going through that you will almost certainly find a solution to what you are after.
I have yet to raise an issue with InterSystems WRC that they have been unable to resolve to my satisfaction in the 20+ years that I have worked with their products.
Apache is java. Java is unnecessary complex. No developer wants to invest in learning all the hundreds of text based configuration files to get something done. Also, apache gives you the most evil and un-usable user interface possible. [Microsoft] IIS makes [life] after development easy, which is already complex enough to be bothered by something as mundane as exposing your work over the internet.
Mirth is another integration platform that we have used but its development, in Java, made us always create new methods every time a new product was integrated. Every connection process had to be developed from the beginning and it was not easy to reuse code. Nor did it allow us to have an extensive catalog of HL7 messaging, having to perform the validation of each and every one of its fields manually.
Microsoft IIS Server is scalable if the underlying server configuration is done correctly. Use x64 edition v/s 32bit and using 32bit mode application pools are some of the tweaks to be done to make the IIS server scalable. There are too many small configurations need to be carried out in order to make a highly scalable IIS server hence not giving full score in this area.
We have integrated 5 laboratories in a treatment monitoring system in less than a month of development. Being able to integrate the following in a period no longer than a week.
