Will Microsoft IIS pose a threat to open source Apache?

A survey of different angles produces bizarre results.

A few days ago, I saw a survey on the internet that showed that Apache's market share is shrinking, while Microsoft's IIS market share in the Web server sector is climbing. I was surprised to see the survey. The other survey turned out to be the opposite. Maybe the first survey was a game of Microsoft!

The first survey, Netcraft, made in August this year, shows that the Apache server accounts for 48.4% of the current active Web site, while Microsoft's IIS is 36.2% and their gap is narrowing. Another survey by E-soft showed that Apache's market share was just the opposite, at 73.81%, while IIS was only 19.33. Who the hell is it?

Although I cannot correctly tell which of the readers of this article is true, according to the principles of statistics, only half of these two surveys are correct, since their investigations are purposeful.

Even though Microsoft's IIS cannot achieve such a high market share as the result of the first survey, the market share is always more artistic than scientific. Still, there is good news, and we have now seen that Microsoft's IIS is moving in a welcome direction and becoming more powerful. Microsoft's corporate Internet Information Server Product manager Bill Stapes says that now that IIS is becoming more secure and more reliable, especially in IIS7.0, it has completely eliminated the crash of Microsoft's Web servers.

Two, IIS and Apache depth comparison

In fact, we simply can not use market share to determine which IIS and Apache in the end to win. Because both IIS and Apache have a very large user base, this means they are strong enough. But they also have some advantages and disadvantages to each other. 　Let's look at some of the features of these two Web servers. 1. The cost of the different weeks, Apache is free and open source, all users who use Apache do not have to pay a penny. See this, a lot of people would say that IIS is not free? But know that Microsoft has not stripped IIS away from Windows, so to use IIS for free, you have to pay to buy windows. It's like a gift promotion from a lot of businesses. To get a giveaway, you have to spend far more money to buy your own product than a giveaway. As a result, IIS is essentially charged. At this point, IIS is more expensive than Apache, so IIS is at a disadvantage in cost.

2. Stability and performance

Because the Web server is generally used for various types of Web site background services, it is necessary to 7*24 to run without fault. So stability is the focus of Web server research.

Earlier IIS (5.0 previous versions) were unstable, sometimes 500 errors, and suspended animation. Users need to restart IIS on a regular basis to make the site work properly. Apache is more stable than IIS in this area. But Apache also has a shortage of places, is set too complex. And once the setup is complete, it can work stably. Although early IIS is unstable, the latest IIS (IIS6 and IIS7) has a very approximate improvement in this area. Especially in Windows2003, it is more efficient to use IIS than Apache. As a result, IIS is slightly better than Apache under Windows. Of course, in non-Windows, it's still Apache, because IIS leaves Windows and doesn't play.

3. Cross-platform features

Needless to say, IIS can only run on Windows operating systems, and Apache not only runs in Windows but also runs on operating systems such as UNIX, Linux, and Solaris. As a result, IIS is much worse than Apache in this regard.