IIS Aid

Microsoft have just announced the Go Live release of their URL Rewrite Module for IIS 7. This is great news for IIS 7 users, especially those using PHP applications where user friendly URLs are used heavily. New features since the CTP release include the following.

• Support for IIS kernel mode and user mode output caching. IIS 7.0 output caching provides significant performance improvements for web applications. URL rewrite module is fully compatible with both types of output caching. This means that now it is possible to safely cache responses for rewritten URL’s and thus boost the performance of web applications that rely on URL rewriting.
• Lower case conversion. A lower case conversion function called “ToLower” can be used within rewrite rule to convert any rule input string or substitution URL to lower case.
• Rule templates. Rule template is an extension for URL rewrite module user interface, that simplifies creation of rewrite rules for a particular task. The Go Live release of the module includes 3 built-in rule templates, plus it allows plugging in any number of custom templates.
• UI for testing of regular expression and wildcard patterns. A GUI tool for testing rule patterns is included into the module’s user interface. The tool can be used to quickly check how the regular expression or wildcard pattern works. Also, it can be used for troubleshooting and debugging of problems related to pattern matching.
• UI for managing rewrite maps. Rewrite maps can be added, removed and edited by using “URL Rewrite Module” feature in IIS Manager.

Read more about this release here.