• User Cache API’s can be used by PHP scripts to store PHP objects and variables in shared memory. This way PHP scripts may improve the execution speed by storing processed data in the cache and then using it in subsequent requests instead of re-creating the data on every request.
• WinCache Session Handler can be used to configure PHP to store the session data in shared memory cache. Using shared memory instead of the default file session storage helps improve performance of PHP applications that store large amount of data in session objects. The content of the WinCache session cache is persisted on disk so that it is not lost during IIS worker process recycling.
• File Change Notifications – the entries in the opcode and file caches are now updated as soon as the corresponding PHP files are modified on a file system. This is very useful for PHP applications that store its configuration in PHP files – for example Joomla!. Now the configuration changes for those applications take effect right away instead of a 30 seconds delay (default cache refresh interval).
• Lock/Unlock API’s – these API’s can be used to obtain/release an exclusive lock on a key in the cache.

Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.1 for PHP – RTW

To install the WinCache Extension 1.1 for PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3, use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/expand/WinCacheForPhp.

The installation with Web Platform Installer is the easiest as it will automatically place the extension binary into proper location and will update the PHP configuration to enable the extension. Also, if you have the previous version of the extension installed, then Web PI will upgrade it. If you install any PHP application by using Web PI then the WinCache Extension 1.1 for PHP will be offered as an optional component.

If you install the extension manually, then follow the instructions at Installing/Configuring WinCache for PHP.

Getting the extension source code

The source code for the extension is available at http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache/1.1.0stable. For the instructions on how to build the extension yourself refer to Building WinCache Extension.

Getting support

The WinCache extension is not supported by Microsoft Product Support Services. Instead it is supported as any other community PHP extension via the forums, mailing lists and the PECL bugs database. Use the following resources:

• To get help with installation, configuration and usage – WinCache documentation on php.net;
• To ask questions about the extension – WinCache forum on iis.net;
• To report a bug in the extension – PECL bug tracking system.

• File Change Notifications – the entries in the opcode and file caches are now updated as soon as the corresponding PHP files are modified on a file system. This is very useful for PHP applications that store its configuration in PHP files – for example Joomla!. Now the configuration changes for those applications take effect right away instead of a 30 seconds delay (default cache refresh interval);
• Persistent Session Handler – the content of the WinCache session cache is persisted on disk so that it is not lost during IIS worker process recycling.
• Lock/Unlock API’s – these API’s can be used to obtain/release an exclusive lock on a key in the cache.

The beta builds of the extension can be downloaded and installed from the extension home page at: http://www.iis.net/expand/wincacheforphp (look for the “WinCache 1.1 – Beta 2” section there). The source code can be obtained from http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache/1.1.0beta2. The documentation for the extension can be found on PHP.NET WinCache documentation.

To learn how to change popular PHP applications to use WinCache 1.1 features refer to the following:

• Performance Improvement in Joomla using WINCACHE user cache
• Performance Improvement in Drupal using WINCACHE user cache
• Make WordPress faster on IIS with Wincache 1.1

This is the beta release and the WinCache team is looking for your feedback on new features and functionality. Use the WinCache Community Forum to ask questions about the extension, report bugs and problems and to suggest features and improvements.

• Express complex URL rewriting logic by using custom rewrite providers written in .NET.
• Replace the URLs generated by a web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent
• Fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching.
• Modify HTTP request and response headers and IIS server variables.

For the complete list of features available in this version, refer to Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0.

Install the URL Rewrite 2.0 – RTW

To install the URL Rewrite 2.0, use the download links at the module’s home page at http://www.iis.net/expand/urlrewrite. Note that this is a final, production ready release that is officially supported by Microsoft.

Upgrade notes:

• If a previous version of URL Rewrite Module, such as v1.0 and v1.1, is already installed then it will be upgraded to the v2.0;
• If an RC version of the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 is already installed, then it will be upgraded to RTW version.

Install the URL Rewrite Extensibility Samples

An important new feature in this release is the support for custom rewrite providers that can be written in .NET. Custom rewrite providers can be used to implement complex rewrite logic which cannot be expressed by using built-in rewriting functionality.

The URL Rewrite Extensibility Samples include the .NET assemblies and the source code implementing the following providers:

• DbProvider – this provider can be used to retrieve rewrite mappings from a SQL Server database table by executing a stored procedure;
• FileMapProvider – this provider can be used to retrieve rewrite mappings stored in a text file;
• FileContainsProvider – this provider can be used to check if any string in a text file is a substring of the provider’s input string.

Download the URL Rewrite Extensibility Samples from MSDN Code Gallery.

More Information

The following documentation about URL Rewrite 2.0 is available on IIS.net:

• Using Custom Rewrite Providers with URL Rewrite Module
• Developing a Custom Rewrite Provider for URL Rewrite Module
• Creating Outbound Rules for URL Rewrite Module
• Reverse Proxy with URL Rewrite 2.0 and Application Request Routing
• Using Outbound Rules to insert Web Analytics Tracking Code
• Setting HTTP Request Headers and Server Variables
• Modifying HTTP Response Headers
• SEO Rule Templates
• User Friendly URL – rule template
• Reverse Proxy – Rule Template
• URL Rewrite Module v2.0 configuration reference

Also, visit the URL Rewrite Forum on IIS.NET if you have run into any problems when using the module or have questions or suggestions.

The update can be downloaded from the following locations:

• Update for Windows Server 2008 (KB980363)
• Update for Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems (KB980363)
• Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB980363)
• Update for Windows Vista (KB980363)
• Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB980363)

The features that are enabled by this update:

• Monitor changes to a file. The module can be configured to listen for file change notifications on a specific file and when that file changes, the module will recycle FastCGI processes for the process pool. This feature can be used to recycle PHP processes when changes to php.ini file occur. To enable this feature use the monitorChangesTo setting in the <fastCgi> configuration element.
• Real-time tuning of MaxInstances setting. This MaxInstances setting dictates the maximum number of FastCGI processes which can be launched for each application pool. Set it to 0 to let FastCGI module automatically adjust the number of instances up or down based on the system load and number of requests waiting in the queue.
• STDERR stream handling. There are several options of how the module can handle text sent by FastCGI application on STDERR. The module can send the error data as a failure response to the HTTP client or it can ignore the error and send whatever was received on STDOUT as a response with 200 status code. This behavior is controlled by the stderrMode setting.
• Sending a termination signal to FastCGI processes. The module can be configured to send a termination signal to FastCGI process before terminating it. This enables FastCGI processes to do a clean shutdown before getting killed. The signalBeforeTerminateSeconds setting can be used to specify how long the module will wait before it forcefully shuts down the FastCGI process that does not respond to the termination signal. This feature is disabled by default.
• _FCGI_X_PIPE_ environment variable. This variable is set by FastCGI module and it contains the name of the named pipe that is used for communication between the module and FastCGI process.
• Relaxed enforcement of response headers syntax. The FastCGI module now has less strict enforcements for the correctness of the response headers.
• Using UTF-8 encoding for server variable values. By default FastCGI uses ASCII encoding when setting server variables. If a FastCGI application requires UTF-8 encoded values for certain server variables, the module can be configured to use UTF-8 only for required server variables. Follow these instructions to enable this functionality.

In addition to that several important bugs have been fixed, most notable of those are the ones reported by Franklin Tse:

• FastCGI module replaces redirect status code set by PHP with HTTP 302
• Custom application errors were masked by the generic IIS errors

If you are using IIS 7.0 to host PHP applications, then it is highly recommended to apply this update to ensure you have the latest version of FastCGI module.

Today IIS team has published a beta of WinCache 1.1, which provides more options for improving performance of PHP applications on Windows. Specifically, the new version includes :

• User Cache API’s, that can be used by PHP scripts to store PHP objects and variables in shared memory. This way PHP scripts may improve the execution speed by storing processed data in the cache and then using it in subsequent requests instead of re-creating the data on every request. The addition of these API’s closes the remaining feature gap that WinCache had when compared with other similar caching solutions like APC and XCache.
• WinCache Session Handler, that can be used to configure PHP to store the session data in shared memory cache. Using shared memory instead of the default file session storage helps improve performance of PHP applications that store large amount of data in session objects.

The beta builds of the extension can be downloaded and installed from the extension home page at: http://www.iis.net/expand/wincacheforphp (look for the “WinCache 1.1 – Beta” section there). The source code can be obtained from http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache/1.1.0. The documentation for the extension can be found on PHP.NET WinCache documentation.

This is the beta release and the WinCache team is looking for your feedback on new features and functionality. Use the WinCache Community Forum to ask questions about the extension, report bugs and problems and to suggest features and improvements.

• Fixed require_once on PHP5.3. If the files were absolute and similar files were included in different case, require_once was including it twice.
• Changed relative path cache to act as resolve path cache. Incremented refcounts under aplist lock. Did comparison using InterlockedCompareExchange.
• Fixed crashes which were happening because aplist refcount and opcode cache refcount can get out of sync due to local cache.
• Exposed is_local_cache property from ocache_fileinfo and fcache_fileinfo. Stats page will use this to indicate when local opcode data is shown.
• Updated the wincache.php to pass chart data on query string to ensure that the charts show the same data that is displayed in tables
• Updated the wincache.php to show whether information about a global or local cache instance is being displayed
• Changed variable names and comments to indicate rplist is resolve path cache and not just relative path cache
• Changed wincache.php to use resolve_path instead of relative_path

The new release is available for download from the extension’s home page at: http://www.iis.net/expand/wincacheforphp. The source code for the extension is available on PHP PECL page here: http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache/1.0.1. The documenation for the extension can be found at http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.wincache.php.

Install FastCGI Extension 1.5 for IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1

To install the FastCGI Extension 1.5 use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/expand/fastcgi.

Note: If you already have FastCGI v1.0, v1.5 Beta or v1.5 RC installed, then the installation package will upgrade it to version 1.5 – RTW. All the related IIS configuration and settings in fcgiext.ini file will be preserved during upgrade. Note that during upgrade from v1.0 the comments in fcgiext.ini will not be updated and will not mention new configuration settings. However the new settings can still be used after upgrade.

New Features

The FastCGI Extension 1.5 includes these new features:

• Monitor changes to a file. The extension can be configured to listen for file change notifications on a specific file and when that file changes, the extension will recycle FastCGI processes for the process pool. This feature can be used to recycle PHP processes when changes to php.ini file occur.
• Real-time tuning of MaxInstances setting. This MaxInstances setting dictates the maximum number of FastCGI processes which can be launched for each application pool. If it is set to 0 then FastCGI extension will automatically adjust the number of instances up or down every few seconds based on the system load and number of requests waiting in the queue. 
• STDERR stream handling. There are several options of how the extension can handle text sent by FastCGI application on STDERR. The extension can send the error data as a failure response to the HTTP client or it can ignore the error and send whatever was received on STDOUT as a response with 200 status code.
• Sending a termination signal to FastCGI processes. The extension can be configured to send a termination signal to FastCGI process before terminating it. This enables FastCGI processes to do a clean shutdown before getting killed.
• _FCGI_X_PIPE_ environment variable. This variable is set by FastCGI extension and it contains the name of the named pipe that is used for communication between the extension and FastCGI process.
• Relaxed enforcement of response headers syntax. The FastCGI extension has less strict enforcements for the correctness of the response headers.
• Per-application FastCGI process pools. In previous version of the extension, the FastCGI process pools could be defined for the entire IIS server or per IIS site. In FastCGI 1.5 it is also possible to define FastCGI process pool per IIS application, which allows to have two different PHP version used for different applications within the same web site.
• Using UTF-8 encoding for server variable values. By default FastCGI uses ASCII encoding when setting server variables. If a FastCGI application requires UTF-8 encoded values for certain server variables, the extension can be configured to use UTF-8 only for required server variables.
• More descriptive error messages are used when configuration in fcgiext.ini is incorrect
• Changes in default values for configuration settings. MaxInstances is now set to 0, so that real-time tuning of MaxInstances is enabled by default. ActivityTimeout is set to 70 seconds.

More information

Refer to the following resources for more information

• FastCGI Extension 1.5 configuration settings
• Using FastCGI Extension to run PHP applications on IIS5.1 and 6.0
• PHP community portal on IIS.NET

Also, be sure to visit the FastCGI Handler forum on IIS.NET if you have run into any problems when using the extension or have questions or suggestions.

Overview

Microsoft URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 is an incremental release that includes all the features from version 1.1, and adds support for outbound response headers and content rewriting. More specifically, it can be used to:

• Replace the URLs generated by a web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent
• Modify the links in the HTML markup generated by a web application behind a reverse proxy.
• Fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching.
• Modify HTTP request headers and IIS server variables.
• Modify HTTP response headers

Install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – RC

To install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – RC, use the download links at the module’s home page at http://www.iis.net/extensions/urlrewrite.

Note:

• If a previous version of URL Rewrite Module, such as v1.0 and v1.1, is already installed then it will be upgraded to the v2.0 RC
• If a beta version of the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 is already installed, then it has to be uninstalled before installing v2.0 RC.

Changes since the beta release

Here are the new features and changes that were added to the module in the RC release. For the complete list of the URL Rewrite 2.0 features refer to Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0.

• Rewriting of HTTP response headers. Outbound rewrite rules can be used modify any existing HTTP response headers or to set new ones.
• Logging of rewritten URLs. The rewrite rules can be configured to log the rewritten URL in IIS W3C logs as opposed to logging an originally requested URL.
• Evaluating HTTP response headers from rewrite rules. The rewrite rules now can access and evaluate the values in the HTTP response headers.
• Allow list for server variables. To prevent distributed rewrite rules from accidentally or purposefully modifying IIS server variables that may affect security or runtime behavior of a web application the modifiable server variables now have to be explicitly added to the allow list.
• HtmlEncode function. Outbound rewrite may often use an un-trusted data (e.g. query string or HTTP headers) to build a replacement string to insert into the HTTP response. In those cases the HtmlEncode function should be used to prevent insertion of client-side scripts into the response, which could result in cross-site scripting vulnerability.
• Updated user interface in IIS Manager. The user interface has been significantly improved to better represent the module configuration and to simplify such common tasks as configuring of rewrite rules and rewrite conditions.
  

Documentation:

• Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0
• Creating Outbound Rewrite Rules for URL Rewrite Module
• Reverse Proxy with URL Rewrite and Application Request Routing
• Setting HTTP Request Headers and IIS Server Variables
• Modifying HTTP Response Headers
• Using Outbound Rules to Add Web Analytics Tracking Code
• URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – Configuration Reference

Support

• URL Rewrite Forum

Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RC

To install the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3, use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/extensions/wincacheforphp.

The installation with Web Platform Installer is the easiest as it will automatically place the extension binary into proper location and will update the PHP configuration to enable the extension. Also, if you have the beta release of the extension installed, then Web PI will upgrade it. If you install any PHP application by using Web PI then the Windows Cache Extension for PHP – RC will be offered as an optional component.

If you install the extension manually, then follow the instructions at “Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP“.

Note:

• The extension can only be used with non-thread-safe builds of PHP
• The extension can only be used when IIS is configured to run PHP via FastCGI
• The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 can only be used with the x86 VC9 build of PHP 5.3.

Changes since the beta release

Here are the features that are new since the beta release (for complete list of bug fixes and features since the beta release refer to the blog post by the WinCache developer Kanwaljeet Singla):

• New API to refresh the cached files. If your PHP application updates some PHP files (for example files with configuration settings or template files) and then needs to load those files on a next request then this API can be used to refresh the cache for those files.
• Disabling the file change checking. The Windows Cache Extension periodically checks if the cached files have been changed on a file system. By default the check happens every 30 seconds. If you do not expect the PHP files for your application to ever change then you can disable this check.
• Enabling or disabling the opcode cache on a per-site basis. The new configuration setting wincache.ocenabledfilter can be used in conjunction with wincache.ocenabled to specify a comma-separated list of IIS web site identifiers that should have the opcode caching enabled or disabled.
• Disabling the cache when PHP is run in command line mode. By default the cache will be disabled when PHP scripts are executed in a command line mode (CLI). If necessary the cache can be turned on by using the configuration setting wincache.enablecli.
• Total cache uptime information. The API’s wincache_fcache_fileinfo() and wincache_ocache_fileinfo() now also report the total cache uptime.
• Cache statistics web page. The RC installation package includes a PHP script that can be used to get the cache statistics.
  

More information

• Windows Cache Extension for PHP on IIS.NET
• Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP

Use the Windows Cache Extension for PHP Forum to ask questions, report bugs and provide feature suggestions.

Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Beta

or, download:

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.2 – Beta

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 – Beta

Follow the instructions at “Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP” to install, enable and configure the extension.

Note:

• The extension can only be used with non-thread-safe builds of PHP
• The extension can only be used when IIS is configured to run PHP via FastCGI
• The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 can only be used with the x86 VC9 build of PHP 5.3.

Benefits and Features

The extension includes three caches that can be enabled or disabled independently of each other:

• PHP opcode cache – PHP is a script processing engine, which reads an input stream of data that contains text and/or PHP instructions and produces another stream of data, most commonly in the HTML format. This means that on a web server the PHP engine reads, parses, compiles and executes a PHP script each time that it is requested by a Web client. The reading, parsing and compilation operations put additional load on the web server’s CPU and file system and thus affect the overall performance of a PHP web application. The PHP bytecode (opcode) cache is used to store the compiled script bytecode in shared memory so that it can be re-used by PHP engine for subsequent executions of the same script.
• File cache – Even with the PHP bytecode cache enabled, the PHP engine has to access the script files on a file system. When PHP scripts are stored on a remote UNC file share, the file operations introduce a significant performance overhead. The Windows Cache Extension for PHP includes a file cache that is used to store the content of the PHP script files in shared memory, which reduces the amount of file system operations performed by PHP engine.
• Relative file path cache – PHP scripts very often include or operate with files by using relative file paths. Every relative file path has to be converted to an absolute file path by the PHP engine. When a PHP application uses many PHP files and accesses them by relative paths, the operation of resolving relative paths to absolute paths may negatively impact the application’s performance. The Windows Cache Extension for PHP provides a relative file path cache, which is used to store the mappings between relative and absolute file paths, thereby reducing the number of relative path resolutions that the PHP engine has to perform.

More information

• Windows Cache Extension for PHP on IIS.NET
• Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP

Use the Windows Cache Extension for PHP Forum to ask questions, report bugs and provide feature suggestions.