Development Choices for Programmatic Administration

As described in Introduction to the IIS Metabase, the metabase contains most of the configuration information that IIS needs to operate properly. You can programmatically administer the metabase by using the IIS Admin Base Object, which also uses the IWamAdmin Interface. Developers can build applications to use this object; or they can build applications to use the IIS Admin Objects, which provide a simpler way to implement applications. The following image shows the relationship between the metabase, the IIS Admin Base Object, and the IIS ADSI Admin Objects layer.

IIS provides two distinct ways to programmatically access the information stored in the metabase:

1. IIS Admin Objects: These objects correspond to the key building blocks of your IIS installation. Thus, there is an IIS Admin Object named IIsWebServer that exposes properties and methods that apply to Web servers, another IIS Admin Object named IIsFtpServer that applies to FTP servers, and so on.

   The IIS Admin Objects are most suitable for use with Automation-compatible languages such as Visual Basic, VBScript, or JScript. For more detailed information, see Using IIS Admin Objects.

2. IIS Admin Base Object: This object provides more advanced development choices. For more information, see Advanced Programmatic Administration.