Microsoft WebMatrix

• IIS Developer Express: A lightweight web-server that is simple to setup, free, works with all versions of Windows, and is compatible with the full IIS 7.5.

• SQL Server Compact Edition: A lightweight file-based database that is simple to setup, free, can be embedded within your ASP.NET applications, supports low-cost hosting environments, and enables databases to be optionally migrated to SQL Server.

• ASP.NET “Razor”: A new view-engine option for ASP.NET that enables a code-focused templating syntax optimized around HTML generation.  You can use “Razor” to easily embed VB or C# within HTML.  It’s syntax is easy to write, simple to learn, and works with any text editor.

Microsoft introduces a new lightweight web development tool that also integrates the above technologies, and makes it even easier for people to get started with web development using ASP.NET.  This tool is free, provides core coding and database support, integrates with an open source web application gallery, and includes support to easily publish/deploy sites and applications to web hosting providers.

Microsoft calling this new tool WebMatrix, and the first preview beta of it is now available for download.

What is in WebMatrix?

WebMatrix is a 15MB download (50MB if you don’t have .NET 4 installed) and is quick to install.

The 15MB download includes a lightweight development tool, IIS Express, SQL Compact Edition, and a set of ASP.NET extensions that enable you to build standalone ASP.NET Pages using the new Razor syntax, as well as a set of easy to use database and HTML helpers for performing common web-tasks.  WebMatrix can be installed side-by-side with Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.

Note: Razor support within ASP.NET MVC applications is not included in this first beta of WebMatrix – it will instead show up later this month in a separate ASP.NET MVC Preview - which will also include Visual Studio tooling support for it.

For more information please visit http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/06/introducing-webmatrix.aspx