Web Platform Installer


Web Platform Installer is a discontinued freeware, closed-source package management system developed by Microsoft that installs non-commercial development tools and their dependencies that are part of Microsoft Web Platform, including:
Microsoft announced Web PI in October 2008 and offered for download a release candidate build of the software the following month. The company released version 1.0 of Web PI on January 21, 2009. The ability to install third-party software was added in version 2.0, released September 24, 2009., Web PI can install 82 titles. Web PI 2.0's options are populated dynamically at runtime from Microsoft's servers, allowing installation options to be updated without the need to download newer versions of the Web PI itself.
In 2010, Microsoft announced Web PI 3 which includes WebMatrix, a new set of integrated tools for web development. Web PI 3 installs additional tools for web development including IIS Developer Express, SQL Server Compact and DotNetNuke.
Web PI features an offline mode where products can be downloaded to a local cache on a machine where internet access is available and then use these cached files on a different machine later. However, Web PI is still not usable in environments where Internet connectivity and local administrator privileges are mutually exclusive.
InfoWorld writer Serdar Yegulalp called Web PI most comparable with Softaculous's AMPPS and wrote that, while not fully compatible with the WAMP model on account of lacking support for installing Apache HTTP Server, it came close by "help accelerate Web development on Windows platforms by deploying many non-Microsoft stack elements" such as PHP, Perl, and MySQL. He liked its ability to work as a staging server but took umbrage with its inability to locally edit remotely published sites not themselves deployed from Web PI.
The Microsoft Web Platform Installer has been retired since July 1, 2022.
WWW Official Site