geekEleet

Well, the mighty M$ (Microsoft) is at it again.  This time, it’s practical and useful - sort of.  Ok, I shouldn’t be too hard on them, after all it is still a beta product and the problems I found were annoyances more than anything.  The question now would be - what is the Web Platform Installer?

Well nobody says it as good as the manufacturer, so let me quote them:

The Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI) provides a single, free package for installing and configuring Microsoft’s entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s simple user interface, you can select specific components or install the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. To help you stay up-to-date with product releases, the Web Platform Installer always contains the most current versions and new additions to the Microsoft Web Platform.

That was a mouthful.

[more]In layman’s terms, it’s a one-stop-shop for installing the components you need for the Microsoft Web Stack.  As a developer, this is a very helpful tool that installs all of the components you need to have a fully functioning Web Stack.  IIS, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Visual Web Developer, plus all of the current IIS Extensions.  You can basically just run the tool and wait patiently for all of this great stuff to magically appear.  That’s where my ’sort of’ comes in.  It took me three tries to get it all done.  On two different occasions the system required me to reboot after installing one of the components.  Each time this happened I had to go back to the Web Platform Installer website and re-launch the installer.

After the third launch, SQL Server completed installing and I was off to the races.  I think this application has some huge potential and I look forward to seeing the final version, as well as the effect this will have on future product installations.  Just a note of caution, Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 are requirements to use this tool and both 32-bit and 64-bit are supported.

You can try it out at the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Website.