Powerful Set of Free Tools: Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and SQL Server Compact

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 provides you with  everything you need to start building standards-friendly Web applications. It is the one of the best tools to develop web application and it is completely free.  Now you can get the most updated version from Web Platform Installer (WebPI) bundle and it will automate installing SP1 together with additional web-specific components:

The above WebPI bundle will automate installing:

  • Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1
  • ASP.NET MVC 3 (runtime + tools support)
  • IIS 7.5 Express
  • SQL Server Compact Edition 4.0 (runtime + tools support)
  • Web Deployment 2.0

After you have installed the WebPI bundle, you will see components similar to the following diagram in Web Platform Installer:

WebVisualStudio_Bundle

Only the components that are not already installed on your machine will be downloaded when you use the above WebPI bundles. This means that you can run the WebPI bundle at any time (even if you have already installed SP1 or ASP.NET MVC 3) and not have to worry about wasting time downloading/installing these components again.

See Scott Guthrie’s Visual Studio 2010 SP1 for more detail