Learning ASP.NET 3.5, 2nd Edition

Appendix A. Installing the Stuff You’ll Need

This book contains lots of practice examples, both ones that you can follow along with, and exercises that you can do yourself. To do them, though, you’ll need the right tools: an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the ASP.NET with AJAX extensions, and a database. Fortunately, everything you need is available in free versions from Microsoft, although you can use the fancier paid versions if you want. In this appendix, we’ll walk you through getting all the software you need and installing it. By the end of this appendix, you’ll be ready to do all the examples in this book.

What Hardware and Software You’ll Need

To build the examples in this book, you’ll need a PC running one of the following editions of Windows:

• Windows Vista (any edition)

• Windows XP Home, SP 2

• Windows XP Professional, SP 2

• Windows 2000 Professional, SP 4

• Windows Server 2000, SP 4

• Windows Server 2003, SP 2

• Windows x64 (any edition with the accompanying service pack)

Microsoft recommends that your computer have (at a minimum) a Pentium III 600 MHz, with 1 GHz recommended. Although Microsoft insists you can run with 192 MB of memory, 512 MB is recommended. Many serious programmers find that 1 GB of memory is the minimum for professional work, and the authors have recently stepped up to 4 GB, but this is what we do for a living.

Visual Web Developer, the .NET Framework, the documentation, and SQL Server Express will require nearly two gigabytes of space on your hard drive. A ...