Microsoft IIS vs. InterSystems Ensemble (legacy product)

IIS as a web application server is perfectly suited for .net, .net core, asp.net applications. Our core ESB runs on IIS and has hundreds of gigabytes of data moved through it every day spread across millions of transactions. We have other mission critical applications that deliver our results to patients and doctors relying on IIS web application servers. If you stay in the Microsoft development stack, IIS is a top tier, efficient, and reliable web server.

Incentivized

If you want to connect different environments, laboratories, companies, etc. Each one uses its own system and services to transmit information. Instead of having to make costly developments for each of the companies to connect, with a single common process many companies could be integrated in very short times. It offers a wide range of common architectures and methods that reduce development time by almost 75%. You do not need to add databases, complex automation connection systems, etc., ... everything is in the same application.

Incentivized

• A big advantage that we use all the time is reviewing the logs that automatically get generated in IIS. It has helped us troubleshoot various problems in our applications over the years.
• IIS integrates really well with Visual Studio and TFS. We are able to quickly deploy new applications and changes to applications when requested by the business.
• IIS has proven that it is easy to configure and maintain with minimal effort.

Incentivized

• Easy to use: The simplicity of its programming language allows fast learning. Visual environment to generate complex code.
• Robust: A fall of the system will not be a problem. Never again will information of the transactions in progress be lost. Never more messages lost.
• Connect to the world: The most popular connection is possible to implement quickly. FTP, File folder, TCP, SMPT, REST.... all method are ready to use. Only define "where" and "how"

Incentivized

• For some web applications, it takes additional time to configure IIS to make a website work.
• IIS logging - it is not the strongest side of the product.
• Compared to Apache or Nginx, IIS uses way more system resources.
• Even with regular patches, IIS has many vulnerabilities.

Incentivized

• Given that Ensemble and Cache are one of if not the only true fully object orientated database/development technologies for massive transactional data systems its customizability is extensive and it just comes down to the creativity of the developer to get the products to pretty much do whatever they want to do with it. However, this is not necessarily obvious to newcomers to the technology.
• The developer community could do with greater participation from the software developers/application specialists and engineers within InterSystems.
• More extensive documentation and greater access to proven working solutions particularly in the realm of some of the lesser known or new and upcoming technologies.

We have no intention to replace all applications running on top of the IIS platform. Not all applications support other platforms and not all support staff are skilled in Linux/Apache platform support. Whereas IIS may not be the best performing or most secure web platform available, for the aforementioned reasons, it is impossible not to continue use of this product.

Incentivized

In general, Microsoft IIS is an alright product. It comes natively with Windows Server. It has good enough GUI to set things up & tweak things around. Once properly setup, it runs stably enough. And with enough Powershell magic, having a CI/CD pipeline to automatically deploy a new version of the application is doable.

Incentivized

ARR (application request routing) in Microsoft IIS Server enables the web-admins to increase the web app reliability and availability through the rule based routing and load balancing of HTTP requests which in turn provides highly available server. IIS 7.0 Manager also provides kernel as well as user mode caching for faster performance and in case if the server fails, the IIS server has good amount of details logged in its log files which help understand and debug the cause quickly. Load balancing facilitates IIS server to fight against availability issues.

Incentivized

In my experience, I have never had significant issues with IIS performance. Sometimes I've experienced issues with loading time, but it is mostly related to the web site code. However Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing free cloud services with very limited resources, and in that scenario, "heavy" websites on IIS could be the issue. In other situations - performance is good.

Incentivized

As mentioned earlier there is so much documentation or guides or stack overflow questions out there that someone will have faced the same or very similar scenario to what you are going through that you will almost certainly find a solution to what you are after.

Incentivized

I have yet to raise an issue with InterSystems WRC that they have been unable to resolve to my satisfaction in the 20+ years that I have worked with their products.

On Windows, Microsoft IIS is easier to implement and maintain than Apache web service. Normally if you need to host PHP or other apache native content on a Windows server, it's recommended to use WAMP or equivalent software to simplify the installation, administration, and configuration of resources. However, you can use Microsoft IIS and other web services on the same server, taking care to keep separate folders and port usage for each system.

Incentivized

There is just no comparison. Try it and see for yourself. Furthermore based on information from software houses I have interacted with over the years it far out paces products like WebSphere.

Microsoft IIS Server is scalable if the underlying server configuration is done correctly. Use x64 edition v/s 32bit and using 32bit mode application pools are some of the tweaks to be done to make the IIS server scalable. There are too many small configurations need to be carried out in order to make a highly scalable IIS server hence not giving full score in this area.

Incentivized

• Speed of development. You don't need to be an expert to expose your website through some DNS
• Robust, there has never been any downtime because of IIS itself.
• The ease of use can have (and has had) some negative impact because it's too easy to implement something, and then forget. When a server is taken down, those unthoughtful implementations come to light the hard way.

Incentivized

• I was able to develop a fully functional integration engine linking pharmacy systems with pharmacy robotics in less than three months in comparison with the year that the previous software development company had taken to develop a solution that was incomplete and did not work using Microsoft technology.
• The engine I developed was so stable and adaptable that it quickly replaced the equivalent engine supplied by the robot manufacturers own software development team.
• It has proven to be so effective that it is now the product of choice for future developments within the organization replacing Microsoft technologies which were the previous company standard.