I was wondering if developing ASP.NET applications on Windows Server 2008 was a good idea, and if not why not.
At work we have to use Windows Server 2008 as our desktop OS for developing (as it is closer to the production environment apparently). Using a server OS as your development environment doesn't seem right to me.
Does anyone know if this is good or bad practice?
EDIT - How about performance? I imagine they'd be pretty much the same though.
Nothing wrong with it.
In some ways, it is good practice, in particular if your servers run the same OS and version (so you can find out certain issues early on).
There is not really a problem with developing in that environment. Visual Studio works well on Windows Server 2008. On the other hand, I have never run into a problem with developing on a workstation OS (XP, Vista, Win 7) and deploying to a server. I suppose that there might be some scenario where developing directly on the server OS is better, but I cannot think of one.
One of my developers is running with Server 2008 as a desktop OS (I do not). She has not had any trouble with Visual Studio. But, she has had many issues (Sorry I do not remember the specifics) with other aspects of the computing environment, things like Outlook, Word, Project, etc. Not that they do not work, just annoyances that pop up occasionally.
Hope this helps,
Jim
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I need a free application that I can use in practicing DDL and queries of SQL. I don't want applications that need to connect to some server. I tried sqlfiddle but it doesn't work always so I can't rely on it. I prefer one that support MySQL.
Note: If there is no such application for MAC OS X, please answer even with applications for other operating systems so I can use them on virtual machines.
You can install XAMPP. It comes bundled with a few services you can find useful. One being MySQL. You can use the interface on phpmyadmin and test your sql out there.
XAMPP Download
I am working on an application in my free time and I want to use a SQL Server database. I have the .iso for SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer but I don't have an extra computer to dedicate as a server. I assumed I could use VMware Player for a virtual server but from what I've read it seems that I would need VMware vCenter or another paid version.
Is there a free option for creating a SQL Server database virtually? This will be extremely small scale (3 tables and just for my personal use) so I am not worried about performance at all.
You can install that locally on your computer. There is no need for a virtual engine. Even if some of the MS documents say you need a server operating system, that is not the case. The setup has a check for valid operating system, and it just installs fine on Windows XP, Vista, 7 in my experience.
But if you want, VMWare Player would also work. In contrast to its name, you can also create virtual engines with it - but with some limitations.
And for a really small solution, even SQL Server Express, which is also free, would do. If I remeber correctly, the main restriction is that the data may not exceed 1 TB.
SQL Server can run locally without any problems, even in your dev/gaming/browsing computer without creating too much interference. There is no problem in installing it for testing and even for production of small systems (the express edition is free and valid for those uses).
Another, even slimmer, alternative, if you dare to upgrade to SQL 2012, would be to use a new feature called LocalDB. It's basically the very same db engine with a very important difference: it does NOT run as a service, but instead it's a regular program that is automatically started when a connection is attempted. Advantages would be that it does not consume resources until it's needed and yet you've got almost the full feature set of the real server. Here is an introduction on it. While I've never used it (always with the full express version), it seems good for the kind of programs you want to develop.
I'm currently working a contract for a company which will be moving an access database to MS SQL server in the future, and I'd like to hone my skills before the company makes the switch.
I'm also looking forward to possibly developing a rudimentary website which would have a simple HTML/CSS/JS front end, and those skills could also use a sharpening. I'd like to develop my skills through some SQL work locally on my home computer. Researching how to do that has only yielded the suggestion of installing an Apache web server with PHP and MySQL on my local machine. While I'm not opposed to doing that, the last time I worked with an Apache install, it was over-complicated and bloated.
Is there a more streamlined option? It doesn't seem necessary to load an entire web server for the specific use I'm going for.
I'd prefer to simply install a program that allows me to host the [My]SQL database locally, and perhaps later some way to test HTML and Javascript interacting with the database. I'm already somewhat familiar with Sequel Pro. As an added bonus, my Python skills are rusty and I'd like to get used to scripting Python. At this point Xcode (4.2) seems the likely solution here, but I'm open to other options.
I would be installing on a 11" MacBook Air running Lion and Xcode 4.2.
Apache and PHP ship with Mac OS X 10.7. MySQL installation is pretty straightforward with the package available from MySQL.
Take a look at these instructions--for your purposes, you can stop after the php.ini section.
Obviously a very subjective question.
I find CherryPy (with Python) for the web server and server programming, combined with jQuery to augment the HTML in the browser to be a powerful and lightweight combination. When possible, I use SQLite for the database — another extremely lightweight option. I share your distaste for Apache, at least when it's not needed.
If you want to develop solid skills that are peculiar to MS SQL Server, you really don't have much alternative to installing SQL Server someplace you can access it. Although you can certainly limit your use of SQL Server to standard SQL set-based commands SQL Server is more often used with a heavy emphasis on procedural code built into stored procedures. Those skills (writing SQL Server specific stored procedures) are only very minimally transferable to or from other database products.
If you were running Windows, you could get MS SQL Server Express for free:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/express.aspx
In the end I just installed MySQL. I ended up following the instructions available from this blog post about setting up django, but not installing phpMyAdmin...
This post also has some good things about setting up passwords and such, since I really didn't want to be stuck relying on something else to admin the MySQL setup.
In the Microsoft docs it says that the .NET framework 4.0 requires SP2 on Windows Server 2003, but a colleague of mine has just installed on a non SP2 windows 2003 Server machine without any issue. Can someone verify whether SP2 is required or not?
I think the key here is "Supported Operating Systems". Even though you might be able to install "without issues", or even apparently run an application, that doesn't mean things really work the way they should for every scenario/application that would normally. Your basically of to unsupported territory.
In case of problems you encounter, you will not know if it is due to not being officially supported, or something genuinely wrong.
If you care about that certainly depends, but for production applications, or anything that costs someone time or money.
I would not do it, in the long run doesn't seem worth the effort.
I am considering switching to a co-located solution running a DNN (DotNetNuke) installation and an email server that mostly just does alias forwarding. I think I can get DNS services outside of this colocation box - but that could be an issue.
I am running this website for a non-profit group and trying to stay inexpensive. Will Windows Server 2008 Web Edition be acceptable for running all of this? My research so far says it will but I am looking for anyone with any experience running web edition and what sort of pitfalls does it have?
I was going to install SQL express as the backend for the DNN site. Indications are that you can't connect to SQL from outside the Web Edition box. Does this include SQL Management studio?
Any assistance or advice on this would be appreciated.
Update:
Still looking for any specifics with Windows Server 2008 Web Edition
We tried running DNN on Windows 2008 64-bit and 32-bit a while back. Not a great experience with intermittant failures and application hangs. We had to revert back to Windows 2003.
This was on a moderately loaded site. If you want to give them any sort of guaranteed uptime/availability I would recommend Windows 2003.