Installing IIS and Microsoft Sql Server with minimal impact on the system

Question

I got a new PC and a fresh Windows installation and like others I like to keep the installation as clean as possible.

I mainly develop Asp.net and the web server that comes with VS2010 (Cassini?) is mostly just fine. Occasionally for some project I do need to have IIS so I mostly just install it. Now a while back I did some PHP development and found this WAMP installation called XAMPP. Now the nice thing was that I didn't have to install it and could just run it from the folder.

So that got me wondering is there a setup that does the same thing for IIS and Sql Server? I thought about running it in a VM but I only have one Windows license (oem).

Answer 1

No, there isn't. They both run as services and as such, among other things, make use of the system registry. If you need them then you'll have to install them.

Answer 2

There's a new product coming out soon called WebMatrix. It includes a new, more portable version of IIS called IIS Express. It also includes an updated Sql Server Compact edition that is supposed to be easier to udpate to full Sql Server (it uses mdf files now rather than sdf) and is supposed to be okay for use in small/medium web sites. There are a few other things bundled in there as well, but those are the two that might be more interesting to you right now. It's still in pre-release, though.