Today Microsoft released version 1.0 of the IIS Database Manager, which enables you to manage local and remote SQL Server or MySQL databases through the IIS Manager. I cannot stress enough how this module has rapidly become one of my favorite extensions for IIS Manager. There are many times when I need to access the data in one of my databases where opening the database management tool would be inconvenient or impossible. (For example, when I am working remotely, or when I don't have the database management tools installed.) In these situations, the Database Manager has been worth its weight in gold.

Another great feature of the IIS Database Manager is that it is extensible, like every other part of IIS these days, meaning that you can create your own database providers. Following up on that thought, in addition to all of the walkthroughs and blog posts that I've been writing about FTP and WebDAV over the past several months, I've also been working on documenting the API set for the IIS Database Manager, and all of those topics have been published on the MSDN Web site under the following URL:

Microsoft.Web.Management.DatabaseManager Namespace

I would be remiss if I didn't give credit where it's due, so my special thanks go to:

• The Database Manager Feature Team - the entire team did some great work:
  • Saad, Brian, Bob, Tim, Andrew, Nitasha, Richard, Carlos, Madhur, Nazim, Ivan, Crystal, Faith, Diana, Pete, Rich, Raul
  • That being said, there are two people that I'd like to call our for their additional assistance:
    • Saad Ladki - Saad was the Program Manager for the Database Manager. I have to give credit where it's due and say that my job would have been a lot harder if Saad hadn't done the initial research for some of my code samples.
    • Brian Delahunty - Brian was my principal contact on the feature team whenever I needed help or backed myself into a corner. Brian was very accommodating when I suggested changes, and he always had great explanations when something needed clarification.
• Microsoft Press - I know that it seems like a gratuitous plug, but I spent dozens of hours going through my "Microsoft® OLE DB 2.0 Programmer's Reference and Data Access SDK" book looking up the various parts of the OLEDB schema. That book was simply indispensable while I was writing my API samples.