Appendix B: The Cassini Sample Web Server

Cassini is a sample Web server, written entirely in managed code. The source code is freely available, which allows us to see exactly how it hosts ASP.NET in conjunction with its own HTTP listener. You can modify the sources and recompile the code to create your own enhanced version of a Web server. Note that because Cassini is a sample, it lacks many of the features you are accustomed to seeing in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). It does not support Secure Socket Layers (SSL) or perform user authentication. It supports only one ASP.NET application per port, and it will process only those requests issued from the local machine.

With all these limitations, why would you be interested in using Cassini? As we mentioned, Cassini is a great example of how the hosting APIs are used to run ASP.NET pages. Cassini will run side by side with IIS or another Web server, so ASP.NET support can be easily added to an existing Web server. The functionality can be embedded into another application, allowing you to run ASP.NET pages without an Internet connection. And of course, you could modify the sources to make a more robust server, using Cassini as the starting point.

System Requirements

Cassini requires one of the following operating systems: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional or Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Home, or Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Because Cassini is written entirely in managed code, it requires the .NET Framework version 1.0 or version 1.1.