Kiliman's Korner

CassiniEx is not dead, just dormant

Kiliman — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 10:22:00 GMT

Hi, just wanted to drop a quick note that CassiniEx has not died. I've been extremely busy with both work and family commitments, so I haven't had a chance to really work on CassiniEx.

It's hard to believe it's been over 10 months since the last version of CassiniEx. That's an eternity when it comes to software.

Thanks to all those that have written in with positive feedback and bug reports.

Obviously the three main features that people have been waiting (and waiting...) for are Windows Service, Integrated Authentication, and Management Console. They are still work in progress and have taken longer than expected (especially with my limited “free” time).

Anyway, thanks for all your patience.

Kiliman

CassiniEx v0.94.402 has been released!

Kiliman — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 12:42:00 GMT

New configuration changes to work more like IIS. Can also change configuration without restarting web server.

Includes sample configurations for Infragistics UltraWebGrid sample and ASP.NET Issue Tracker Starter Kit.

Also see a screen shot of the new CassiniEx Management Console coming soon!

http://www.systemex.net/CassiniEx/

Kiliman

CassiniEx status

Kiliman — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 17:40:00 GMT

Just a quick post to update everyone on the current status of CassiniEx.

The ability to reload a web app configuration while the server is running is just about complete. Hopefully in the next day or two.

Also out of curiosity, I wondered how difficult it would be to have Apache serve up ASP.NET pages using CassiniEx. Using the Proxy module, it wasn't difficult at all. I'll post an article on how to configure Apache to use CassiniEx with support for virtual hosts.

Another user sent me a suggestion to include the options for ExcludeExtensions. This will allow you to exclude certain extensions, like .MDB, from being served by CassiniEx. I'll also add an IncludeExtensions for those that would prefer it that way.

I'm also considering adding support for ISAPI extensions to CassiniEx. This will enable CassiniEx to serve up Perl and PHP pages using the ISAPI support of these packages.

Anyway, I'll keep everyone posted.

Kiliman

CassiniEx v0.94.321 has been released!

Kiliman — Sun, 21 Mar 2004 18:19:00 GMT

I know, the version number is getting smaller with each release. I promise that won't be the case going forward. It's just that I've been making so many changes, it just didn't feel right to increment the version number of a 1.0 release until it was complete.

This release is another attempt at improving the configuration process. You are no longer required to keep your configuration files in %ApplicationSettings%. Some people have told me that they prefer to store their configuration files in different places.

This release gives you complete control over where you store your files. You can now define different PathMaps (user-defined variables) that expand to the desired path at runtime. See the README file for more information.

Some people preferred to have all their web apps defined in one file instead of individual files for each web app. You can now do both.

Besides updating the configuration system, the only new feature I added was the ability to automatically unload the AppDomain after a certain amount of idle time. This should help reduce resource demands.

I have some new features planned as well. These include:

Install as Windows Service
Automatically detect configuration changes and load new web apps without restarting server
GZip compression and Chunked-Transfer encoding
Support for Web Application Archives (similar to Java WARs) which are zipped web apps that can be dropped into a folder and automatically configured and started
And much more..

The WAR support is the one I'm most excited about. If you have some ideas or suggestions on how you want that feature implemented, please let me know.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the new release.

My next post will be about how to use CassiniEx with Web Matrix. I've also been able to debug web applications using the standard CLR Debugger.

Kiliman

Updated verson of CassiniEx available

Kiliman — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:58:00 GMT

The newest version of CassiniEx supports a redesigned configuration system that will make it even easier to configure a new web app.

It also fixes some bugs. It now handles changes to Web.config gracefully and will reload the app domain as needed.

Check out the README file on the download page for more details.

http://www.systemex.net/CassiniEx/

Kiliman

CassiniEx now supports Keep-Alive connections and If-Modified-Since header

Kiliman — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 18:31:00 GMT

EDIT: Serves me right for trying to do too many things at once. I meant to say it supports the If-Modified-Since and Last-Modified headers, not the If-Last-Modifed header. Sorry for any confusion.

Using TCPView, I noticed that there were a lot of sockets in TIME_WAIT status. Especially on sites that had image rollovers.

I decided to add Keep-Alive connections to minimize the number of open sockets. I also added support for the If-Modified-Since and Last-Modified headers. This way cached files will not have to be resent.

Logging was also fixed to log these other statuses like 404 Not Found and 304 Not Modified.

I'm going to change the way configuration files are used in the next version. I don't like using the App.config, since it gets overwritten every time you rebuild and reinstall.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Excuse my noob-blogger self

Kiliman — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 17:57:00 GMT

This is my first time blogging, so please excuse me if I make some dumb mistakes.

While I get used to the .Text blogging engine, I may have to edit my posts. I realise that some news aggregators will see that as a new post which I know is a pain.

Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have this thing figured out.

CassiniEx to support Keep-Alive connections

Kiliman — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 17:45:00 GMT

Just wanted to post that I added support for Keep-Alive connections to CassiniEx. I’m still ironing out some of the kinks, but I hope to have it posted by tomorrow.

Subscribe to the RSS feed and I’ll notify everyone when it’s posted.

Thanks!

What is CassiniEx?

Kiliman — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 17:41:00 GMT

What is CassiniEx?

CassiniEx is an enhanced version of the Shared Source Cassini Personal Web Server developed by Microsoft.

Why did I write CassiniEx?

At my day job, I create web applications for many different clients. Almost every project is a stand alone web app that resides in the ROOT web. Since I develop on Windows XP, I can only have one web site running at a time.

I wrote a tray app called SwitchIIS that allowed me to toggle between different web sites. But that grew old after a while.

I wondered if I could get Cassini to load up more than one web app. After some experimenting, it turned out that it was possible. I talked to some people about it, and they thought it was pretty cool.

But what they really wanted was a scaled-down IIS. So after adding the features that I thought were essential to my work like virtual folders, multiple host headers, and logging, CassiniEx finally emerged.

What’s the future of CassiniEx?

Considering that Microsoft was kind enough to share the source for Cassini and in part made CassiniEx possible, I want to make this an open source project that other developers can contribute to. Even if the contribution is simply a suggestion for a new feature, that’ll be great.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be blogging about the design of CassiniEx and how to incorporate it into your daily development process. For example, I’ll be writing about how to create and debug web projects in Visual Studio .NET that run on CassiniEx.

Thanks for your interest in CassiniEx.

Who is Kiliman?

Kiliman — Tue, 16 Mar 2004 12:15:00 GMT

My name is Michael Carter. I’m a Sr. Software Engineer for Advanced Health Media, Inc. My day job basically consists of developing web applications for the pharmaceutical industry.

My online nickname, Kiliman is short for Kilimanjaro. It’s the codename for a project I was working on for my yet-to-be-started company, Volcanic Technologies. I’m sure most of us at one point in time dreamt of starting our own company. Hey, at least I got as far as coming up with a really cool codename.

I’ve been working with computers since 1982. The first time I saw a computer was when I went over to my friend’s house to check out his new Commodore VIC-20. Up until that point, I wanted to be an architect. But after that first encounter, I knew that I wanted to work with computers.

My first computer was a TI-99/4A, and the first real program I wrote was a bowling game. It was written in Extended Basic and used its awesome SPRITE capability. After that, I graduated to the Commodore Amiga 1000. That’s where I started writing in C.

I have worked with a lot of different technologies over the years, but .NET is one of the few that has gotten me really excited. I think it’s a great time to be a developer. I started this blog to share my thoughts and ideas about .NET development and the impact it will have on our lives.

When I’m not programming, I’m spending time with my wife, Lisa, and our two children: Sarah, who’ll be 10 next month and Matthew, who’s turning 7 in May. Gee, how time flies! I remember when they were both so little.

We live in the beautiful city of Chesapeake, Virginia, home of the Lee Boyd Malvo sniper trial. Hey, we’re finally on the map!