Version 1.0 RTM of the SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP is live!

Version 1.0 of the SQL Server 2005 Driver for PHP is available for download on the MSDN download site.

Ran across this today on IIS.net.  For those of you that know me, I've been raving about URLScan as great security tool for IIS since IIS 5 days. It was one of the centerpieces of the IIS FastTrack class I taught back in the day.

After a very long time, the IIS team has released an update to URLScan 2.5, a beta release of URLScan 3.0. It's still an ISAPI filter and I'd bet that it's written by the leading authority on ISAPI at Microsoft, Wade Hilmo who also wrote the original URLScan and siblings.

One of the key new features is the ability to create different rule sets for different sites.  In URLScan 2.5 you could only have 1 ruleset for the entire server which was great for sites that had 1 primary app or very similar workloads on different sites, but if you had 1 site that had a maximum URL of 50 characters and another 250 characters, you had to set the max URL length to 250 which meant less than optimum security. Now, you can tuneup each site to according to it's requirements.

Another cool addition is that if you change the ruleset, you don't have to recycle IIS in order to pick up the changes. That's a nice improvement that is harder than it sounds .

So check out the new beta and be sure to send a note to the team via the forums about how these tools. When they hear from customers about the usefulness of these releases, it helps them justify doing more of updates and add-ons.

Learn IIS7: Using UrlScan: Configuring Security: Installing and Configuring IIS 7.0

During the development of IIS7, Bill Staples often promised better integration with Powershell was in the future.

Well, the future is now and today I got the following message in my inbox:

Congates IIS team for this very cool improvment in integration and administration that makes IIS even easier to manage!

-brett

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IIS7 PowerShell Provider Tech Preview 2

Here is a quick overview:

What’s new with TP2?

·         IIS7 Powershell provider now supports SSL (installing and acquiring a certificate, creating an ssl site binding)

·         Tech Preview 2 ships with 40 new cmdlets. All of these cmdlets are for day-to-day IIS tasks like creating web-sites, web-applications, enabled request tracing, adding a handler or a module. The complete list is at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/492/using-the-task-based-cmdlets

The IIS7 PowerShell Provider offers

• Create Web-Sites, Web Applications, Virtual Directories and Application Pools
• Change Simple Configuration Properties on Web-Sites, Application Pools, Web Applications and Virtual Directories
• Add and Change Complex Configuration Settings
• Query Run-time Data (Web-Site State, Application Pool State, Currently Executing Requests)
• Execute Advanced Configuration Tasks, Scripting, Integration with other PowerShell Snap-Ins and features
• Search and Discover Configuration Settings

DOWNLOAD:
Tech Preview 1 of the IIS 7.0 PowerShell Provider can be found here:
x86: http://iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1664
x64: http://iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1665

FORUMS:
Go to our PowerShell forum if you need support or if you are looking for 'Tips and Tricks'
http://forums.iis.net/1151.aspx

WALKTHROUGHS:
The walkthroughs are here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/447/managing-iis-with-the-iis-70-powershell-provider/