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Windows Process Activation Service (also known as WAS) is the process activation mechanism introduced within
Internet Information Services v7.0.
Windows Activation Service builds on the existing Internet Information Services v6.0 but is more powerful because it provides support for other protocols besides
HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
, such as
TCP
TCP may refer to:
Science and technology
* Transformer coupled plasma
* Tool Center Point, see Robot end effector
Computing
* Transmission Control Protocol, a fundamental Internet standard
* Telephony control protocol, a Bluetooth communication s ...
and
Named Pipes
In computing, a named pipe (also known as a FIFO for its behavior) is an extension to the traditional pipe concept on Unix and Unix-like systems, and is one of the methods of inter-process communication (IPC). The concept is also found in OS/2 an ...
. Windows Activation Service extends the
ASP.NET
ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name stan ...
HTTP hosting concept (ASMX Web Services). As a standalone Windows component, Windows Activation Service is completely separated from the IIS hosting environment and provides a protocol-agnostic activation mechanism not limited to HTTP.
Windows Activation Service allows the developers to choose the most appropriate protocol for their needs. For HTTP, data transfer relies on the ASP.NET HTTP. For protocols such as TCP and Named Pipes, Windows Activation Service leverages the extensibility points of ASP.NET for transferring data.
These capabilities are implemented in the form of protocol handlers, which manage communication between the worker process and the Windows service. There are two types of protocol handlers loaded when the WAS activates a worker process instance: Process Protocol Handler (PPH) and App Domain Protocol Handler (ADPH).
References
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Windows technology
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