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Building the Windows Server 2003 Web Site with XML and .NET

Published: November 18, 2002
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Microsoft .NET-connected technologies

With a green light to build a new Web site for Microsoft's flagship server product, Web developers were eager to showcase the latest innovations emerging from Microsoft .NET-connected technologies.

The vision: Put .NET to work to help customers more effectively learn about Windows Server 2003.

For Microsoft Web developers, the road to adopting .NET was clear: No more static Web pages, no more ASP pages, and no more HTML in source files.

No more HTML? What kind of heresy was this? After all, billions and billions of pages have been generated using time-honored tags such as <P>, <BR>, <TD>, and <TR>.

But developers and site managers building the Windows Server 2003 Web site had other ideas as they sought to maximize .NET technology with questions like:

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What if we could build a Web site that could be hosted not just in U.S. English but anywhere in the world, in any language, and at a fraction of the current cost?

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What if we could build content in one place and use it anywhere else without having to spend extra time converting it?

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What if these improvements could help deliver the best possible customer experience for Windows Server 2003?

It was these and other challenges that set the ball rolling in a fast-paced collaborative effort resulting in Microsoft's first public Web site built using a full slate of the latest .NET features including XML, the C Sharp programming language, and ASP.NET.

The launch of the Windows Server 2003 Web site in July 2002 made it the first product Web site on the 3-million page Microsoft.com site to be built using XML and other .NET technologies.

How Microsoft.com Benefits from Windows Server 2003

Upgrading to Windows Server 2003 Release Candidate 1 resulted in several immediate benefits to both the product site for Windows Server 2003 as well as the larger corporate Microsoft.com Web site. Windows Server 2003 and its Web server component, Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6.0), deliver improved availability, manageability, and security. For more information about how Microsoft.com benefits from Windows Server 2003, see Running the World's Busiest Corporate Web Site on Windows Server 2003.

XML Advantages

XML itself has been around for several years now and provides a number of advantages that have led many to call it the "lingua franca" of the Web. Most importantly, for Web sites, XML lets developers separate content from presentation, a benefit that enables content to be easily reused in multiple places and on different devices.

Part of what makes XML so powerful is that it complements HTML by letting Web pages function as database records, enabling information sharing with other people, systems, languages, and processes. And it's this capability that makes building XML-based Web sites particularly economical, especially in the case of translating sites into multiple languages, a process known as localization.

Converting Sites to Other Languages

Localizing a Web site and hosting it in another country has traditionally been a laborious and costly process. You might compare it to all the tasks required for a chef to plan, prepare, cook, and serve a different gourmet seven-course meal to 28 guests from around the world. It could be done, but it would take a lot of time and money.

Localization managers may feel they face a similar quandary in their efforts to bring Web content to all parts of the globe. Until now, they have had to:

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Assess each page and determine if it was appropriate for translation.

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"Scrape" the contents of the page and create separate files for each page.

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Send a collection of files to a subsidiary office.

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Do this separately for every language.

In turn, subsidiaries not only had to translate the content but they also had to spend time architecting and developing the Web site.

Now with Web sites built in XML, localization is dramatically easier. Because XML is built on a Unicode foundation, it's much easier to create internationalized documents.

"Subs don't have to rebuild a site," said Mark Webber, localization program manager in Microsoft's Content Development and Delivery Group. "We're going to send them a completely working site."

Of course, subsidiaries will still need to translate the English content but they'll only need to translate it once, in one place. "Strings" of text used to provide context or directions for page elements are all contained in a single file instead of appearing on multiple pages throughout the site. In this way, costs savings are realized simply by reducing the number of words that need to be translated.

Already, the solution is being called a "site in a box" because there is no need for subsidiaries to re-architect or redevelop the site. Instead, they can focus entirely on localizing the content they need.

It's as if the gourmet chef found a way to provide a unique quality meal for 28 guests at the cost of a box lunch.

Single Source and Content Reuse

In a world in which static Web pages are maintained by different teams throughout the company, it's little surprise that popular content gets reused in different places. But it becomes problematic if the content is simply duplicated with minor modifications on different sites. If an update needs to occur, it can be difficult to ensure that the update is made everywhere, particularly if content is duplicated in more than two or three places.

The solution is to create a "content store" that can be used by different sites, enabling a single source of content to appear in multiple places and different formats. Integrity of content is maintained through a single source. By architecting content using XML, the Windows Server 2003 Web site has moved a step closer to turning this vision into reality.

The Microsoft.com Network Project: Bringing it all Together. 
Developers used the .NET Framework to build a new application that plays a key role in integrating and unifying content from various content sources as well as XML Web services. Built in ASP.NET, this internal tool known as the Microsoft.com Network Project (MNP) is responsible for substantially boosting performance levels. As shown below in Figure 1, Windows Server 2003 delivers 88 requests per second compared with 57 requests per second on the Windows 2000 Web site, which uses older ASP pages.

Using ASP.NET. 
MNP solves this problem, integrating XML-based content from multiple sources using ASP.NET to encapsulate parts of a Web page into reusable components.

Putting XML Web Services to Work. 
MNP is making possible new ways of delivering information. For example, an XML Web service could enable visitors to the Windows Server 2003 Web site to see the 10 most active newsgroup discussions at any given moment. The only modification required for the Web site would be to add an XML tag to a particular page. MNP would then automatically instantiate a server control that knows how to read that Web service to retrieve the data and present it on the page. Similarly, in the Microsoft Download Center, an XML Web service could provide visitors with a list of the top 10 downloads for Windows at any given moment.

Precision Feature Sorter. 
Expected to be released on the Web site shortly, the feature sorter makes it easy for customers to find out information about a particular feature in a specific edition of the product. The XML schema provides the data management required to offer feature sorting capabilities dynamically. Customers can control the amount and type of content they use and the way in which it is displayed. For example, they can elect to see only the Active DirectoryŽ service features available in Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. All the information required to feed the feature sorter is stored in only two files. In contrast, more than 60 pages would have been required if the information were presented in static Web pages.

High Performance Web Site. 
It's little surprise that using the latest innovations enabled by .NET technologies result in a high performance Web site where pages load quicker than before and consume less network bandwidth. Part of what enables this performance is the ability to cache pages on the host computers that run Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0. Instead of rendering pages every time a script is called, pages can be cached directly on the server. The result: Faster delivery and download times.

Link Management. 
Maintaining links on large complicated sites that undergo change over the course of several years can be especially challenging. The Windows Server 2003 Web site has implemented a new way of linking to pages within the site, using 128-bit Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs). Instead of using actual URLs, Web producers who build the sites use GUIDs such as "AB9F2B0D-558C-3A10-C244-B41D491BBF47."

Summary. 
The Windows Server 2003 Web site brings customers a unique experience enabled by the innovations of NET technologies including XML, . ASP.NET, and XML Web services. Architecting the site in XML permits new levels of flexibility that allow content to be reused in a variety of formats. A key benefit is easy localization of an entire site, which greatly reduces the costs of providing Web sites in different languages while making it easier for customers from around the world to learn about the product. The new process model and caching capabilities enabled by IIS 6.0 boost performance making the Windows Server 2003 Web site one of the best performing sites in Microsoft history. Hosting the Web site on Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0 helps ensure high availability, enhanced manageability, and stronger security.


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