I've recently configured a lot of Windows 2003 servers to run our e-commerce system and remembered that both the built-in configuration of IIS6 and the IIS6 GUI aren't friendly for a proper gzip/deflate compression of our modern file extensions. That's why I'm writing this tutorial which will make your box compress css, js, json, xml and aspx files the way you probably want it. This will also helpeful if a new type of file happen to appear in the future.

Changing the W2K3 interface for best performance

This guide gives a very straight forward step-by-step approach for W2K3 servers running with Classic Start Menu interface. Because I consider that "My Computer" icon incredible useful in a lot of single machine managing scenarios. To enable it, just right-click the Taskbar, click Properties, click Start Menu tab, select Classic Start menu radio button and click OK.

Set up the IIS Compress Service

• Starting from a clean Desktop (WIN+D), right-click My Computer, click Manage
• Expand Services and Applications, expand Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, right-click Web Sites, click Properties
• Click Service tab, select both Compress application files and Compress static files, select Limited to (in megabytes), set it's input text to 1024 and click OK.

Set up the metabase.xml

• Open an console (WIN+R, type cmd and click OK)
• Execute in the console the commands below:

• Search for "IIsCompression"
• Set both deflate and gzip sections with the following properties:

• Execute in the console the commands below:

That's it, your server should be compressing the files now! Enjoy the performance!

Introduction

This article deals with an idea that I believe to be one of the key concepts of modern programming. When I say modern, I'm referencing to methodologies that re-appeared with hype names and excessive power during the second half of the 90's and the beginning of the 21^st century as an answer to the bureaucratic, slow and heavy regulated methods in use at the time. As some of their examples are: ASD(Adaptive Software Development), DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method), Scrum, XP(Extreme Programming) among others...

These methodologies, that were known as lightweight methods until year 2001 and then became the Agile Software Development, have some aspects in common. At first, they were "born" from the developers necessity to focus more on the product in which they're working on than in hard processes related to development. It means that, unlike the classic long-term strategies and specifications that predict and document the entire project from the beginning to the end, the development is made in small iterations, with minimal planning. Another important factor is that these methodologies are in favour of face-to-face communication rather than written documentation among the team members (which are small, around 5-9 people). Third and most important to all programmers, in my humble opinion, is the constant execution of automated tests in all steps to ensure the quality of each small unit of code they generate.

Despite being an interesting topic, I'll stop my wondering here, because it's not my goal to teach techniques to manage software teams, but to teach one of the things that all of those techniques will be require you to do. Before anything, I want to remind you that a programmer will always program, so that doesn't matter too much what methodology is adopted by the company where you are working on. For fun, below is a strip from Geek Hero Comic that was kindly provided by the author Salvatore Iovene for this article:

For those who don't know yet, this is the third article of a series that I committed myself to write. Here is the list of articles:

1. ASP, a misinterpreted technology
2. Event-Driven-Programming and lambda function in ASP/VBScript.
3. TDD (Test Driven Development) in ASP/VBScript.
4. Languages: Based on Objects and Object Oriented.
5. Object Oriented in ASP/VBScript "Hackers way".
6. "Scripting Components", the ace in the role.
7. Caching: the concept of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) applied to ASP.

If you're reading one of my articles for the first time, I strongly recommend that you read the previous ones first, because I'm trying to lead you into a great abstraction, presenting the topics incrementally.

Introduction

In this article, I'll speak a little about some issues that I believe are relevant to all modern programmers. However the examples will be written in ASP/VBScript+JScript, so I'll be coherent with the purpose of these articles, which will showcase ASP as an extremely versatile and efficient environment. Here is the list of articles:

1. ASP, a misinterpreted technology
2. Event-Driven-Programming and lambda function in ASP/VBScript.
3. TDD (Test Driven Development) in ASP/VBScript.
4. Languages: Based on Objects and Object Oriented.
5. Object Oriented in ASP/VBScript "Hackers way".
6. "Scripting Components", the ace in the role.
7. Caching: the concept of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) applied to ASP.

If you're reading one of my articles for the first time, I strongly recommend that you read the previous ones first, because I'm trying to lead you into a great abstraction, presenting the topics incrementally.

Introduction

After thirteen years of web development, in which the last five I spent almost entirely developing with the .NET platform, I finally saw in Classic ASP the most versatile environment for web development. The main reason for this versatility is, surprisingly, the fact that it is interpreted. It might sound like a joke, mainly because of the whole buzz around the code-behind and the advantages of the compiled code's performance. But, in my opinion, this attribute, summed to multiple languages support, is what guarantees to ASP a distinguish position among the environments for advanced programmers.

Aiming to share my experience and point of view to the whole community, I've decided to create a series of articles, where I'll address key topics that will lead to a greater understanding of the strength hidden in ASP. I've ordered them so that easier topics are discussed first before moving on to the harder ones. Here they are:

1. ASP, a misinterpreted technology
2. Event-Driven-Programming and lambda function in ASP/VBScript.
3. TDD (Test Driven Development) in ASP/VBScript.
4. Languages: Based on Objects and Object Oriented.
5. Object Oriented in ASP/VBScript "Hackers way".
6. "Scripting Components", the ace in the role.
7. Caching: the concept of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) applied to ASP.

In all subsequent articles, I'll indicate the current stage in bold. I don't intend to stop contributing after the end of the seven subjects. I'll probably attack more problems and more specific topics that illustrate the advantage of using ASP. Well, one step at a time...