Our research shows Visual Studio Express (and perhaps some other express products) does have enough in it to develop iParts.

Some notes from one of our developers:

I have verified that VS Express can be used to develop iparts. Particularly, the Visual Web Developer 2010 Express application is required to use the iPart Visual Studio template. I’ve setup a machine that I’ll be using for Innovations which has Visual C# Express, Visual Web Developer Express, SQL Server Express, and a standard installation of iMIS (no source code), and I’m currently developing an ipart on that machine.

I don’t know if Visual C# Express is required, but I had installed that first and found that you cannot create a Web Application project with it. I then installed Visual Web Developer Express.

-------------------------

FYI, since VS Express doesn’t allow attaching to a process to debug, I had to do a few things so that I could debug my ipart:
- set debug=true in web.config

- Turn on windows features: Internet Information Services->Web Management Tools->IIS 6 Management Compatibility->IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility
- Project properties->Web: set Start URL=http://localhost/imis15/mbr, Use Custom Web Server->Server Url=http://localhost/imis15
- F5 in VS to start debugging

For more information, the 2012 iNNOVATIONS Technical Track demonstrated all iPart development and tools within Visual Studio Express.  Check out the full resources here:

http://www.imiscommunity.com/2012_innovations_technical_track