Why I love my sysadmins...

Today was huge! Let me just state, for the record, that I know pretty much nothing about Windows beyond the user level. So IIS, SQL Server, and the mysterious world of "Services" are pretty much totally new to me. I know IIS' default root dir is inetpub/wwwroot and I know how to set permissions on directories within. That's it.

I brought my work PC home, since my laptop was NOT beefy enough to run SQL Server. So I had to set up SQL server on the new machine, which I'll call "the new machine." This turned out to be a trick because it already had SQL Server Express, and it wouldn't upgrade. Not that it felt it necessary to inform me of this. So it installed everything but the Database Engine (kinda fundamental). Not that it felt it necessary to inform me of this. Then it kept telling me this or that service wasn't started, but they weren't in the Services List... anyway, long story short, I finally had to uninstall all things SQL and then install fresh.

OK so then I had to get my Visual Studio projects from laptop to new PC, and merely copying the files didn't quite do it - had to figure out how to add existing web site to a new solution file. Done.

THEN I had to get my SQL Server databases from laptop to new PC and unlike MySQL there seems to be no easy LOAD DATA INFILE or some such. I mean, check this out: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314546

I ended up using the detach / attach procedure, although it would have helped if they'd explained that these are simply in the Management Studio GUI. This seemed to work GREAT. Awesome.

Next was getting my IIS to serve websites to localhost. I expected it to just "do this" but it was good I went in and played with it because I had to update it from ASP 1.x to ASP 2.x and also I learned to specify that rgproto was an "application." Then guess what: it just magically appeared, AND (apparently) it connected to hollywood and actually works!!!

Next step will be to get it to connect to my local copy of the database. Then I can start mucking around for real.

Whew. Now I know even *more* reasons to appreciate system administrators (as if I needed more reasons). It's a pain to be your own.