A colleague and good friend of mine who runs IIS Answers tipped me off about a tool that has slipped by a number of IIS administrators, myself included. Have you ever grumbled at the prospect of viewing, searching, or modifying values in the IIS metabase? Here's the tool for you—MetaEdit 2.1. MetaEdit 2.1 lets you manage the metabase, including backing it up and restoring it. The utility also includes an import and export function that is worth checking out if you need to set up multiple Web sites using consistent values. With the updated version of Metabase Editor, editing values couldn't be easier. If you've ever used regedit, you already know how to use MetaEdit. Opening a value to edit is no more complicated than double-clicking it.
Version 1.0 of this tool originally shipped with the "Microsoft Internet Information Server Resource Kit" Version 2.1 has been out for a few months; see the Microsoft article Q232068 for information and the download file.
I also want to tell you to keep an ear to the development ground. A lot of Web developers were in Orlando, Florida, last week at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Why is this important? Have you noticed all the references to Microsoft .NET services lately? Well, this week in Orlando, Microsoft previewed C# (pronounced C sharp), which is designed to take advantage of the new .NET platform.
Reminiscing just a bit, first came C, then C+, then C++, now C# (if the developer community accepts it). After the conference, expect to see a flurry of activity from Microsoft to help promote this new OOP language targeted at XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) developers. Microsoft has scheduled C# for beta release later this year. In the meantime, I'm sticking with my version, which was designed for those who aren't used to code. I call it C? (pronounced C-Where do I start?).
