
AWeb server's job is to accept incoming HTTP requests and return something useful to the caller (whether the caller is human or, in the case of Web Services, a machine). Windows® includes a mature infrastructure for handling requests—IIS and related extensions. However, programming IIS from scratch can be rather tedious and often error prone. A better way to manage HTTP requests is to work with one of the frameworks that sit on top of IIS. This month I'll compare the two main technologies for creating Web applications for Windows: ASP.NET and ATL Server. Each framework has some specific advantages and disadvantages.
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