What is the difference between XAMPP or WAMP Server & IIS?
Solution 1:
WAMP is an acronym for Windows (OS), Apache (web-server), MySQL (database), PHP (language).
XAMPP and WampServer are both free packages of WAMP, with additional applications/tools, put together by different people. There are also other WAMPs such as UniformServer. And there are commercial WAMPs such as WampDeveloper (what I use).
Their differences are in the format/structure of the package, the configurations, and the included management applications.
IIS is a web-server application just like Apache is, except it's made by Microsoft and is Windows only (Apache runs on both Windows and Linux). IIS is also more geared towards using ASP.NET (vs. PHP) and "SQL Server" (vs. MySQL), though it can use PHP and MySQL too.
Solution 2:
WAMP: acronym for Windows Operating System, Apache(Web server), MySQL Database and PHP Language.
XAMPP: acronym for X (any Operating System), Apache (Web server), MySQL Database, PHP Language and PERL.
XAMPP and WampServer are both free packages of WAMP, with additional applications/tools, put together by different people.
Their differences are in the format/structure of the package, the configurations, and the included management applications.
In short: XAMPP supports more OSes and includes more features
Solution 3:
WAMP [ Windows, Apache, Mysql, Php]
XAMPP [X-os, Apache, Mysql, Php , Perl ] (x-os : it can be used on any OS )
Both can be used to easily run and test websites and web applications locally. WAMP cannot be run parallel with XAMPP because with default installation XAMPP gets priority and it takes up ports.
WAMP easy to setup configuration in. WAMPServer has a graphical user interface to switch on or off individual component softwares while it is running. WAMPServer provide an option to switch among many versions of Apache, many versions of PHP and many versions of MySQL all installed which provide more flexibility towards developing while XAMPPServer doesn't have such an option. If you want to use Perl with WAMP you can configure Perl with WAMPServer http://phpflow.com/perl/how-to-configure-perl-on-wamp/ but it is better to go with XAMPP.
XAMPP is easy to use than WAMP. XAMPP is more powerful. XAMPP has a control panel from that you can start and stop individual components (such as MySQL,Apache etc.). XAMPP is more resource consuming than WAMP because of heavy amount of internal component softwares like Tomcat , FileZilla FTP server, Webalizer, Mercury Mail etc.So if you donot need high features better to go with WAMP. XAMPP also has SSL feature which WAMP doesn't.(Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a networking protocol that manages server authentication, client authentication and encrypted communication between servers and clients. )
IIS acronym for Internet Information Server also an extensible web server initiated as a research project for for Microsoft NT.IIS can be used for making Web applications, search engines, and Web-based applications that access databases such as SQL Server within Microsoft OSs. . IIS supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP.