Windows Activation Services
Encyclopedia
Windows Process Activation Service (also known as WAS) is the new process activation mechanism that ships with Internet Information Services
v7.0.
Windows Activation Service builds on the existing Internet Information Services v6.0 but is more powerful because it provides support for other protocols besides HTTP
, such as TCP
and Named Pipes. Windows Activation Service extends the ASP.NET
HTTP hosting concept (ASMX Web Services). As a standalone Windows component, Windows Activation Service is completely separated from the IIS hosting environment and provides a protocol-agnostic activation mechanism not limited to HTTP.
Windows Activation Service allows the developers to choose the most appropriate protocol for their needs. For HTTP, data transfer relies on the ASP.NET HTTP. For protocols such as TCP and Named Pipes, Windows Activation Service leverages the extensibility points of ASP.NET for transferring data.
These capabilities are implemented in the form of protocol handlers, which manage communication between the worker process and the Windows service. There are two types of protocol handlers loaded when the WAS activates a worker process instance: Process Protocol Handler (PPH) and App Domain Protocol Handler (ADPH).
Internet Information Services
Internet Information Services – formerly called Internet Information Server – is a web server application and set of feature extension modules created by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Windows. It is the most used web server after Apache HTTP Server. IIS 7.5 supports HTTP, HTTPS,...
v7.0.
Windows Activation Service builds on the existing Internet Information Services v6.0 but is more powerful because it provides support for other protocols besides HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
, such as TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...
and Named Pipes. Windows Activation Service extends the ASP.NET
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is a Web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic Web sites, Web applications and Web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages ...
HTTP hosting concept (ASMX Web Services). As a standalone Windows component, Windows Activation Service is completely separated from the IIS hosting environment and provides a protocol-agnostic activation mechanism not limited to HTTP.
Windows Activation Service allows the developers to choose the most appropriate protocol for their needs. For HTTP, data transfer relies on the ASP.NET HTTP. For protocols such as TCP and Named Pipes, Windows Activation Service leverages the extensibility points of ASP.NET for transferring data.
These capabilities are implemented in the form of protocol handlers, which manage communication between the worker process and the Windows service. There are two types of protocol handlers loaded when the WAS activates a worker process instance: Process Protocol Handler (PPH) and App Domain Protocol Handler (ADPH).