== Goals ==

The aim of this page is to describe getting Django to run on Windows, served by IIS and with an SQL Server backend.

Useful for people who already have such a setup (You wont find me discussing the installation of SQL Server here) and can't justify (or just don't want) Apache and PostgreSQL as well.

Steps:

 * Install Python
 * Install Python's Windows extensions
 * Install an ISAPI extension for IIS
 * Install Django
 * Configure Django to look at SQL Server
 * Test
 * Celebrate

== Installing Python ==
Head to http://www.python.org/ and look at the menu on the left; in the "quick links" section is a link to the Windows installer for the latest stable version of Python. Download and run it, following the wizard steps until it is complete.

== Install Win32 extensions for Python ==
These are some Windows specific extensions for Python, and they are (I think) required for the IIS driver later.

Visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/ and download the Windows installer, run through it.
( That URL looks neater, but the download link gives Error 500 at the moment. This one seems to work though: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=78018 )

== Install an ISAPI extension for IIS ==
This is an extension that loads the Python interpreter into memory while IIS is running, and uses it to serve requests more quickly. CGI apps need to start a new instance of the interpreter for every request, this does not have that overhead - it performs a similar service to mod_python on Apache servers.

Go to http://pyisapie.sourceforge.net/ and download it (look in the menu on the right, under "Links" for a download link). Unzip the archive so you can copy files out of it.

Documentation is in the readme files, but at the time of writing the install is:

 * Copy the PyISAPIe.dll file to your Python path, e.g. c:\python24
 * Set the security permissions on the dll file so that IIS can read it. In the case of IIS/Server 2003 you need to give read permissions to the "Network Service" account
 * Look in the <extracted archive>\source\PyISAPIe\Python\ folder and copy the Http folder to c:\python24\lib\site-packages (adjust, depending on where you installed Python)
 * Open the IIS Manager from Administrative Tools, and create a new virtual directory in your website (give it permissions to execute ISAPI extensions when the wizard asks.
 * Go to the properties of the folder, click on the configuration button (if it's greyed out, click 'create' first), and add a new wildcard extension (the lower box), locate the pyisapie.dll file and untick the "check file exists" box.

That's it installed. In the <extracted archive>\source\PyISAPIe\Python\examples folder is a file called Info.py. Copy this to your new virtual directory folder, and then try and view http:// your site / info.py

It should work. If it doesn't, when you find out why please come back and explain what happened and how you fixed it. ;)

The PyISAPIe extension has a driver for Django as well, so that's where I will be heading next.

== Install Django ==