What are the things missing in Owin/Katana which is available in ASP.NET?

Question

I am looking to build a small ASP.NET application using WebAPI and a html front-end, on .NET 4.0. I need to support authentication, authorization, data access (EF), logging / tracing. It can be an intranet/internet application, so it should support load balancing / clustering. I am sure if I just go with ASP.NET and IIS I will get all these features. However I like OWINs idea of independent async modules and its goal of being high performance hosting environment. But how much of OWIN/ KATANA is matured and what functionalities are still missing/buggy?

Answer 1

The whole idea of Owin/Katana is to build a light weight server with only the function we need. Your question is better to be "What are things missing in Owin/Katana, which is available in IIS?"

The short answer is, IIS is a full-blown server. Many of the websites we developed only requires a small fraction of all its functions. It is like shipping a bag of grocery using an 18 wheeler.

If you look at Katana, all functions are modular. Say, if I need WebAPI, I can add in that function. When CORS is needed, I will extend appBuilder to the related functions. So in a sense, we have a fully customizable server. Since all functions can be added in, I would say nothing is missing.

Another thing to mention is that an installation of IIS would require you to run a Windows Server. If you are on a Mac or not a server version of Windows, you can host your website on Katana or any other OWIN implementation.