Web Platform Installer Review
Earlier this year Microsoft released the Web Platform installer, currently available in version 1 or as a version 2 beta. I've been playing around with it for a few days and I think it is generally a step in the right direction. If you are doing web development on the Microsoft platform, it's well worth it to install this on any development machines you are using.
It's basically a "one stop shopping" to download and configure all the various pieces of software you might want on a Microsoft web development machine. With frameworks, IIS extensions, beta tools and sample applications seemingly appearing from every direction lately, this tool gives you a great way to keep track of everything, including what you already have installed and how it is configured.
Although it works great as a basic way to pave your machine with the standard tools in production release, another nice plus is the ability to see all the peripheral tools and features the various groups are developing. Some are in beta or various stages of RC, but I definitely immediately saw some stuff that looked interesting that I was previously unaware of.
One such tool is the IIS Database Manager plug-in, which allows you to do basic management of SQL Servers referenced by your web.config file. The tool is extensible, which means support for non SQL Server databases is possible in the future. The tool uses some of the objects/assemblies from SQL Server 2008 and the Web Platform Installer will download and install any of those bits you need to get the Database Manager up and running. This tool is currently in Release Candidate status and more information can be found in the IIS forums.
Here are a couple of screenshots from my local machine connecting to a database up on the hosting site where I have my personal site.
Database Manager as it appears in IIS Manager
Looking at data from the Book table in my database
You can even edit table definitions.
Pretty versatile tool, particularly if you just need to make some quick adjustments or if the right ports aren't open to use Sql Management Studio.