URL rewrite for NT

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

To do URL rewrite on NT servers I have always used ISAPI filters. When I started, there was nothing on the market so my engineers build a simple solution. Now, there are so many products on the market and most of them I have no hands on experience with.

So, I would like us to identify the various filters available as well as discuss real life experience with using them.

This is a short list of some of the filters I know of - please add to the list:

QwerkSoft
www.qwerksoft.com/products/iisrewrite/

ISAPI Rewrite
www.isapirewrite.com/

Opcode Digital Media
www.opcode.co.uk/components/rewrite.asp

[pageoneresults]

I'm a strong proponent of ISAPI_Rewrite. I've been doing rewrites now for almost two years and have tried the other products. Nothing even comes close to the power and ease of configuration of ISAPI_Rewrite. Here's a quick review...
No IIS service restart required.
Easy product installation and comes with default "global configuration" for the entire server (all sites will be affected by these global rules).
Better support for multiple virtual sites. Just need to drop in "local configuration" file and it's up and running right away. Again, no IIS restart here either.
Excellent product documentation and examples.
Configuration file can be edited live at anytime.
ISAPI has a small stand alone Regular Expression Test Utility GUI app for developers to test/debug expressions before use.
Error log file produced if there is any error in the production configuration file.
ISAPI shows full documentation of all available expressions.
ISAPI has Optimization Flag to clean up URL Encode before parsing and a Ignore Case-sensitive Flag.

[bakedjake]

xqASP is good for quick jobs. Not as flexible, but easier to setup.

[Black_Knight]

I've recommended Qwerksoft to many clients, and had nothing but good, positive experience with it.

One client did have a problem initially with a conflict, but this was resolved very quickly indeed. Qwerksoft have always provided excellent support whenever needed. I recommend it with confidence, which is as good as one can ask, ultimately.

I've heard nothing but good about ISAPI rewrite too, and am going to try that next time around just to compare and test.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I have recomended ISAPI Rewrite to a few clients that have set up solutions that seems to run fine. Even a few complex ones on .NET

[fastig]

Hi everyone,
I wonder how all those rewrites work with stats.

Suppose a url
http://www.domain.com/web/type/computer/item/123.asp

is rewritten to
http://www.domain.com/products.asp?type=computer&item=123

We want to know how many hits item 123 got, right? But when a stats server logs hits, it would log a hit to products.asp, not 123.asp, right? Then we have no way of knowing how many hits each product gets. All we see is visitors hitting our main processing script products.asp, am I right?

Any thoughts?
:confused:

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

You will have to look up the names, titles or whatever you want in yor content DB prior to creating your reports. I think WebTrends have that option and I am sure others do too.

Another solution, which I would usuallt reccomend for tracking marketing responses anyway, is to turn to client side tracking, such as IndexTools. This way you will not have to deal with how your server log requests at all and you will get nice and easy to read reports.

[fastig]

Mikkel,
thanks for quick reply.
I must admit the 1st paragraph of it looks pretty obscure to me. I guess what you mean is setting up the Stats server to be able to see dynamic content. I just looked in LiveStats, which my hosting provider uses, and looks like it can do it.
As to IndexTools, firstly it doesn't come free, and secondly it can slow down loading your page, can't it.

So I recon correctly configured log-based stats may be a good option.

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Good client side tracking will not slow down your pages. Just remember to keep the tracking code outside your main tables. IndexTools, that I know the best, have a very short timeout, so even if the tracking server is down it would not be something your users notice.

Personally I find client side tracking much more usefull for marketing tracking and analysis. If you want to find out what users do it's best done on the user side. If, on the other hand, you want to know how your servers operate and function, server monitor logfiles is the right place to look. But thats just my oppinion.