If you’re going to learn ASP.NET, you first need to make sure you have all the necessary software components installed and working on your system. Let’s take care of this before we move on.
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
Visual Web Developer 2008 is a free, powerful web development environment for ASP.NET 3.5. It includes features such as a powerful code, HTML and CSS editor, project debugging, IntelliSense (Microsoft’s code autocompletion technology), database integration with the ability to design databases and data structures visually, and much more. You’re in for a lot of Visual Web Developer fun during the course of this book.
.NET Framework 3.5 and the .NET Framework Software Development Kit (SDK)
As we’ve already discussed, the .NET Framework drives ASP.NET. You’re likely to have the .NET Framework already, as installs automatically through the Windows Update service. Otherwise, it’ll be installed together with Visual Web Developer.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
This is the free, but still fully functional, version of SQL Server 2005. This software is a Relational Database Management System whose purpose is to store, manage, and retrieve data as quickly and reliably as possible. You’ll learn how to use SQL Server to store and manipulate the data for the DorkNozzle application you’ll build in this book.
SQL Server Management Studio Express
Because the Express Edition of SQL Server doesn’t ship with any visual management tools, you can use this free tool, also developed by Microsoft, to access your SQL Server 2005 database.