Grasp Ruby on Rails

Microsoft has just announced full FastCGI support for it's websever software - Internet Information Services (IIS). Though primarily a PHP announcement (the FastCGI Extension was developed by Microsoft in partnership with Zend), it does offer Ruby developers a glimmer of hope for running Ruby on Rails on Windows servers.

"By supporting the open standard, Microsoft has made it possible for PHP and other CGI compliant languages to be hosted efficiently and effectively on Windows Server 2003 and IIS."

The important part here for Rails developers is in the middle of that statement - and other CGI compliant languages. We find from reading the Using FastCGI to Host PHP Applications on IIS 6.0 and IIS 5.1 guide on the same website under the "What is FastCGI?" heading that:

"The IIS FastCGI support enables IIS to host normal CGI programs like PHP, or Ruby On Rails, using the FastCGI protocol, offering high-performance and stability for production deployment of such application frameworks."

This new FastCGI Extension will be available for webhosts to use on older versions of IIS 6 and 5.1, so there will be no excuse anymore for Windows hosts not to support Ruby on Rails.

"This FastCGI Extension release is supported on IIS 6 on Windows Server 2003 for a fully scalable production environment and on IIS 5.1 on Windows XP in order to support developers who build their Web applications on Windows client machines."

At the end of the article lies the true gem:

"Looking ahead, betas of Windows Server 2008, already include the FastCGI Extension as a completely integrated feature of Internet Information Services IIS 7.0 (IIS7)."

This means the capability to run Ruby and Ruby on Rails (via the FastCGI extension) will be available on IIS out of the box, in all future versions. May Ruby on Rails developers around the world rejoice.