It also included FTP support, rather than requiring FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE). This feature made it appealing to developers who could not run IIS due to corporate policy or because they did not have a version of Microsoft Windows that supported IIS.

Instead, developers could deploy the source code for their ASP.NET pages and rely on ASP.NET to dynamically compile the pages on first request.ĪSP.NET Web Matrix included a small Web-server tool ('Cassini') that ran on the local computer, enabling the developer to test ASP.NET Web pages without requiring Internet Information Services. It used a folder-based model, rather than the project model used in Visual Studio, and did not require design-time compilation into a single deployable. This set it apart from Visual Studio, avoiding many of the complexities required to support different tools, languages, and development environments in Visual Studio. It was a comparatively small download, fast and easy to install, and it was specific to Web applications. Web Matrix included a number of features that made it an appealing alternative to Visual Studio 2003. A subsequent release of Web Matrix ('Web Matrix Reloaded') in June 2003 included support for Microsoft Access. The original release supported only Microsoft SQL Server, which was bundled with Web Matrix in the form of MSDE, a desktop version of the database engine. The project was developed into a product (originally code-named 'Saturn') that was released in the summer of 2002 as a free download on the Web site, without official support (only community support) and with only word-of-mouth marketing. Originally conceived as a test bed for working with ASP.NET controls in a designer environment, the ASP.NET team saw a number of benefits for a tool of this type, including the creation of an Integrated Development Environment that could act as a lightweight alternative to Visual Studio. ĪSP.NET Web Matrix grew out of a pet project started by Nikhil Kothari. It was a managed application written in C#, Microsoft's principal programming language. The original ASP.NET Web Matrix was a free tool released by Microsoft for the rapid development of web applications intending to run on Microsoft servers supporting ASP.NET server-side technologies.

Microsoft webmatrix vs expression web