Professional IIS 7 and ASP.NET Integrated Programming

Chapter 3. Managing the Integrated Configuration System from IIS Manager and the Command Line

The previous two chapters provided in-depth coverage of the IIS7 and ASP.NET integrated configuration system. As discussed, you can use this system to manage both the Web server and ASP.NET sites and applications. This chapter shows you how to interact with this integrated system and how to extend its schema to add support for your own custom configuration sections.

Server Management

When it comes to interacting with the new configuration system, you have the following three options:

• Open and edit a configuration file such as applicationHost.config in your favorite text editor. This approach requires you to have a solid understanding of the XML structure of the applicationHost.config file as discussed in the previous chapter. This is a great option if you feel comfortable with manipulating XML elements and attributes.

• IIS7 exposes the XML contents of its configuration files via two convenient intermediary components that perform the required XML element/attribute manipulations under the hood on your behalf. This allows you to configure the server and ASP.NET with these convenient intermediary components instead of direct manipulation of the XML elements and attributes. IIS7 comes with two intermediary components:

  • Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager: Provides a rich, user-friendly GUI to manage the server and ASP.NET.

  • appcmd.exe: Provides a convenient command-line tool to manage the server ...