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| Microsoft Personal Web Server | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Microsoft |
| Operating system | Windows 95-98,Windows 98 SE,Windows NT 4.0 |
| Available in | Same languages as Windows |
| Type | Web server |
Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) is a scaled-downweb server software forWindowsoperating systems. It has fewer features thanMicrosoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) and its functions have been superseded by IIS andVisual Studio. Microsoft officially supports PWS onWindows 95-98,Windows 98 SE, andWindows NT 4.0. Prior to the release ofWindows 2000, PWS was available as a free download as well as included on the Windows distribution CDs. PWS 4 was the last version and it can be found on the Windows 98 CD and the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack.[1]
Personal Web Server was originally created byVermeer Technologies, the same company which createdMicrosoft FrontPage,[2] before they were acquired by Microsoft. It was installed by FrontPage versions 1.1 to 98 as well.
NT Workstation 4.0 shipped withPeer Web Services, which was based on IIS 2.0 and 3.0. With IIS 4.0, this was renamed Personal Web Server to be consistent with the name used in 95/98.
Since Windows 2000, PWS was renamed the same IIS name used in server versions of Windows as a standard Windows component.Windows Me andWindows XP Home Edition support neither PWS nor IIS, although PWS can be installed on Windows Me. In other editions of Windows XP,IIS is included as standard.
BeforeMicrosoft Visual Studio 2005, PWS was useful in developingweb applications on thelocalhost before deploying to a production web server. The IDE of Visual Studio 2005 (and later versions) now contains a built-in lightweight web server for such development purposes.
FTP,SMTP,HTTP and the usual web languages such asPHP andPerl are supported by PWS. It also supports basic CGI (Common Gateway Interface) conventions and a subset ofClassic ASP.[3] Using these technologies, web applications running on PWS are capable of performing and interpreting database queries and results.
Microsoft also produced a version of Personal Web Server for the Macintosh based on code acquired in its acquisition of ResNova Software in November 1996.[4]
