Can I toy around learning ASP.NET MVC using only VS 2010 Express and localhost on Windows 7?

If so,

• What tooling do I need?
• What reference sites could be useful?

I have VS 2010 Express, "C#开发者_运维问答 Edition". What is the absolutely most trivial DB and localhost web server setup needed?

(Professionally, I'm a Windows Mobile dev using VS 2008. This ASP.NET MVC task is just for fun at home, to learn something new.)

Yes, although you should probably use Visual Web Developer Express Edition instead.

All you need is SQL CE and Cassini (which are both included in VWD), and the MVC3 framework.
For bigger databases, you can use SQL Server Express Edition, also free.

All you need is to install WebMatrix in addition to Visual Web Developer Express. It comes with IIS Express + SQL Compact which is great for "toying".

Note

You do not need to use WebMatrix IDE, it is only a useful package to install all you need in one go.