Evaluation Requirements
The following requirements will allow you to evaluate the Express Software Manager on up to 25 machines connecting to a single server or workstation. Please see System Requirements for full implementation requirements.
Hardware & Operating System
Evaluating Express Software Manager requires a machine running Windows Workstation XP SP2 (or above) or Windows Server 2003 SP1 (or above). The following are recommended minimums for installing the Express Software Manager evaluation on a single machine:
- 2.0GHz processor
- 1GB RAM (2GB preferred)
- 500MB hard disk space
Note: Microsoft licensing limits the number of network connections to workstation versions of Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista). If you want to evaluate Express Software Manager on more than 10 connecting client machines, you should run your evaluation on Windows 2003 Server or above.
Evaluation Installation
Express Software Manager can be downloaded as a self-extracting executable (esm900.exe) or regular ZIP file (esm900.zip). To start the installation, run ESMSetup.exe (which is started automatically if you launch esm900.exe). On the initial ESMSetup dialog, select Evaluation Install to start the evaluation installation process.
Additional Software
Evaluating Express Software Manager requires that several Microsoft components be installed, specifically:
- Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
- Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (or above)
- Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 (or above)
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and Microsoft .NET 3.5 SP1 are included in the evaluation package and are automatically installed as part of the setup process. If IIS installation is required, you will be prompted to do so.
Installing Microsoft IIS
The Express Access Point is a web service that provides the data communication mechanism between Express Clients and the Express Database. The Express Reports Web Site provides access to Express Software Manager’s reports. Both components require IIS, which can be installed on your evaluation machine. IIS is installed via the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel (called "Programs and Features" on Windows Vista and above). This control panel gives you the option to add or enable Windows features including IIS. To learn more about installing IIS on a workstation, click here.
Installation Options
The standard evaluation process installs all non-client components on a single machine. If you want to install components on different machines (such as an existing database or web server), run ESMSetup.exe on each machine, choose Normal Install, and select only those components you wish to install.
Note: you should always install the database component first.


