Microsoft Internet Information Server /
Personal Web Server


About Microsoft Internet Information Server

Microsoft Internet Information Server is a very robust and secure environment for running a web server. This is the environment that we wanted to use for our project. In order to run IIS, you must have first install Microsoft Windows NT. Unfortunately, the purchase of Windows NT is outside of the budget for this project. IIS comes free with Windows NT Server. Upgrades of IIS are free to the owners of Windows NT.

About Microsoft Personal Web Server

Microsoft Personal Web Server was our choice for web server for this project. The PWS easily adds web server capability to the Windows 95 laptop that we are using. The administrative interface is is flexible enough to use and has enough features that allows us to configure our web server. PWS not only provides an HTTP server, but also provides an integrated FTP server. This was useful when we were sharing information between each other. The web server was our central depository for storing HTML documents and forms as well as servlets.

Since we weren't able to use IIS, we needed to make sure that PWS supported ISAPI extensions, CGI scripts, and Java servlets. We found that PWS does support all except Java servlets. However, a third party program, JRUN, which will be discussed later, plugs into PWS, as well as IIS, and provides the capability to run Java servlets.

PWS works well with the other workstations we were using, and does not have the system requirements of a full web server like IIS. It is designed for small-scale peer-to-peer or small Web server usage. The software is fully integrated into the Windows 95 Task Bar and Control Panel, which makes it easy for us to start and stop HTTP and FTP services.

Installing Microsoft Personal Web Server

The nice thing about Microsoft Personal Web Servers is that it is a free download from the Microsoft web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/pws/. It is a very easy install. After you download the software, you will have an executable installation file. When you click on the file to install, it will not prompt you for installation questions. It simply installs where it wants to on your C drive. After the software is installed, it requires a reboot of your system. After the system reboot, the PWS icon will be running in the System tray, and it will also add an icon to your Control Panel. From either location, you can access configuration settings to customize and configure PWS for your needs. The HTTP process starts by default, but if you want to run the FTP process, you will have to configure it to start up automatically.

Implementation Notes

Microsoft Personal Web Server has little configuration requirements. This makes it a good candidate to get up and running quickly so that we can concentrate on developing Java servlets. PWS is already running HTTP services right from the start. A directory called WebShare is created at the root of the C drive. This is the main location that contains all of the HTTP and FTP documents. Under WebShare, the is a Wwwroot for HTTP documents, an Ftproot directory for FTP documents, and a Scripts directory for CGI running scripts. The Scripts directory is by default configured as an execute only directory, the Wwwroot is configured as read only and the Ftproot directory is configured for read and write access.