Microsoft Personal Web Server
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) is personal web server software offered by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. PWS was only officially supported by Microsoft on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows NT 4.0. It has fewer features than Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS).
PWS was a free download before Windows 2000, when it was replaced by IIS which was included as a Windows component. PWS 4.0 was the last version and was included on the Windows 98 CD and also part of the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack. Note that there is no version of PWS or IIS that is supported on Windows Me and Windows XP Home Edition, although IIS is included in all other Windows XP editions and PWS is verified to be installable on Windows Me [1].
From a developer's point of view, PWS was useful in developing web applications, on a localhost, before deployment to a test or production web server. However, with the release of Visual Studio 2005, the IDE contains a built-in, lightweight web server for development purposes.
PWS supports FTP, SMTP and HTTP. A programmer can set up virtual directories and root them on an actual file system, before deployment. The usual web languages are supported, such as VBScript, JScript, and Perl. It also supports basic CGI (Common Gateway Interface) conventions and a subset of Classic ASP [2]. It is possible to test database connections to a database server for a web application server with this setup, as well.
PWS was superseded by IIS after the general deployment of Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5.0).
