All of Microsoft’s Web server technologies build on a common foundation—Internet Information Services (IIS). Microsoft and third parties use IIS’s two plug-in architectures—Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and Internet Server API (ISAPI)—to build more sophisticated Web development platforms.

In some cases, Web tools require a specific combination of programming language and tools, such as ASP (which relied on scripting languages) or ATL Server (which only supports C++). But the most successful products have been those such as ASP.NET that support a variety of programming languages.