Study notes 2

A Web Application is a IIS Web site specially configured to run WSS sites.

A site collection is a container of WSS sites. Each site collection requires a top level site.

A sub site are created under a site collection.

A web application is a container of site collections. A site collection is a container for sub sites.

Site collections provide scope for membership and security authorisation.
Site collections provide a convinient scope for backup and restore operations.

Features provide a mechanism for defining and adding site elements such as menu custom actions, web parts, and event handlers.

Application pool identity - Configured with a specific system account or domain account. When http.sys launches a new instance of the woker process w3wp.exe for a specific application pool, it uses the application pool identity to initialise a Window Security token that servces as a process token. It establishes the 'run as' identity for code that runs withing the IIS worker process.

When WSS converts an IIS Website into a Web application, it creates serval virtual directories. These are used by various aspects of the WSS runtime.