Application Server and Internet Information Server

• An application server:

This is a server program in a computer in a distributed network that provides the business logic for an application program.

The application server is frequently viewed as part of a three-tier application, consisting of a graphical user interface (GUI) server, an application (business logic) server, and a database and transaction server.


More descriptively it can be viewed as dividing an application into:

1. A first-tier, front-end, Web browser-based graphical user interface, usually at a personal computer or workstation

2. A middle-tier business logic application or set of applications, possibly on a local area network or intranet server

3. A third-tier, back-end, database and transaction server, sometimes on a mainframe or large server

As Internet Information Server is a group of Internet servers (including a Web or Hypertext Transfer Protocol server and a File Transfer Protocol server) with additional capabilities for Microsoft's Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server operating systems.

• Internet information server:

IIS is Microsoft's entry to compete in the Internet server market that is also addressed by Apache, Sun Microsystems, O'Reilly, and others.

With IIS, Microsoft includes a set of programs for building and administering Web sites, a search engine, and support for writing Web-based applications that access databases.

Microsoft points out that IIS is tightly integrated with the Windows NT and 2000 Servers in a number of ways, resulting in faster Web page serving.

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