Book Image

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice

Book Image

Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice

Overview of this book

Why is Software Configuration Management important?Software Configuration Management (SCM) is the discipline of managing the building and modification of software through techniques including source-code control, revision control, object-build tracking, and release construction. SCM involves identifying the configuration of the software at given points in time, systematically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration throughout the software development lifecycle.Software Configuration Management is one of the first skills a serious developer should master, after becoming proficient with his or her development tools of choice. Unfortunately, this does not always happen because the subject of SCM is not commonly taught in either academic or company training.When developing software, you need to have a manageable team development effort, track and maintain the history of your projects, sustain parallel development on multiple product versions, fix bugs, and release service packs while further developing the application. This is where the concepts of Software Configuration Management come into play; SCM is about getting the job done safer, faster, and better.Visual SourceSafe has a long history behind it. The previous versions were either loved for their ease of use and integration with other Microsoft products, or hated because the headaches caused by using them improperly. This book will help you to avoid such problems.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface

Connecting to the Database


Depending on the location, we have two options for connecting to a SourceSafe database:

  • Local Area Network (LAN) access (we are at the local development site)

  • Remote internet via HTTP(S) (we are at a remote location)

A LAN connection allows us to connect to the SourceSafe database using all the available SourceSafe client applications:

  • Visual SourceSafe Explorer

  • Visual SourceSafe Administrator

  • Visual Studio with the SourceSafe LAN plug-in

  • Command-line utilities

A remote internet connection via HTTP(S) on the other hand allows us to connect to the SourceSafe database using only Visual Studio with the SourceSafe internet plug-in. This plug-in uses the SourceSafe XML web service and it is optimized for best performance over remote connections.

There is actually a third option for connecting to a SourceSafe database as we've seen in Chapter 2—a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection. A VPN connection is, logically speaking, somewhat a hybrid between a LAN and an internet...