Internet Server Application Programming Interface: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:58, 1 March 2010

Revision as of 01:31, 6 May 2010

Line 9:

==Performance and compromise==

The greatest disadvantage of developing web applications at ISAPI level is the increased development time over typical scripting languages like PHP and ASP. Another penalty is the lack of native support for many standard web application features such as [[session (computer science)|session]] handling, which are common features in technologies such as ASP and PHP. Because ISAPI extensions are normally written in unsafeunmanaged languages like C, there is also an increased risk of [[buffer overflows]] and similar vulnerabilities occurring unless explicitly accounted for.

ISAPI filters and extensions do offer the greatest possible performance for web applications due in part to their use of native code as well their tight integration with the actual webserver. ISAPI filters in particular allow for low-level interaction with HTTP messages that are not available via any other mechanism. Due to these performance advantages many scripted languages such as PHP have versions of their interpreters available in ISAPI form.

===ISAPI for IIS 5.0 and earlier===