The upcoming release of IIS7 now supports .NET server extensions written in C#. No longer will developers need to write their ISAPI extensions in C++. This is very significant in that the ability to create extensions at the IIS level allows developers to do pre and post processing of request and response streams as well as to modify core server functionality. This was not possible with previous versions of IIS utilizing .NET alone.
The new capability is provided via a new mode called “Integrated Mode”. This will allow components using the existing ASP.NET extensibility model and APIs to execute within the IIS7 server runtime. The ability to execute at this layer is now referred to as the “Integrated Pipeline”. One of the more exciting aspects of the Integrated Pipeline is developers can now make changes to a few configuration options to their existing ASP.NET server components and they can now run within the Integrated Pipeline.
For more in depth information about IIS7 and the new Integrated Mode, refer to Mike Volodarsky’s blog and the IIS7 website dedicated to provide technical information about IIS7.