Vision

Standards

Performance Metrics

Compatibility with existing Microsoft tools; robust distributed environment; Internet support; ease of installation and use.

Usage and Dependencies

Industry Usage: In Microsoft development environments, the Visual Basic / Visual InterDev IDE contains a "Visual Component Manager", which is a rudimentary Explorer-type hierarchical database for software scripts and components. It serves as a front end for an Access or SQL Server database.

A more useful tool is Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, another component of the IDE that provides for check-in/check-out of code, and hence maintains source code version control among a team of developers.

SC Usage: SC developers are skilled in using many popular tools to support project management and the software lifecycle, including Rational RequisitePro, Visual SourceSafe 6, Visual Intercept, Visual InterDev, and ProjectCentral. However, the tools are not integrated, and much remains to be done to leverage the investments in these tools. For example, Requisite Pro generates about 70 documents in planning a project, but there is no repository to organize, manage, and link these documents. Without adequate data management, powerful code generation or authoring tools may create more documents than developers can usefully absorb. Hence, SC awaits the release of a more integrated set of tools.

SC Application Impacts: Development speed and defect reduction, which these tools enable, are key drivers for all SC applications.

References

VSS