The Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 product-line offers two choices for software change management:
1. Visual SourceSafe 2005
2. Team Foundation (TF).
Visual SourceSafe is a source control tool for professional software developers.
Team Foundation is a change management system that provides integrated source control, issue tracking, and process management for development teams.
File Storage
VSS stores the file data as files within the file system.
Team Foundation stores the files as data within SQL Server database. It uses stored procedures for efficient storage and retrieval of files. A transaction with SQL Server can be rolled back in case of a network failure during the save procedure, which make it more relaible.
Scalability difference between VSS and TF
Visual SourceSafe is designed for teams of twenty or less. Team Foundation can support teams of up to 2000 users. Team Foundation servers can contain as much data as a SQL Server database allows (terabytes) and your hardware can support, whereas the recommended size limit for a Visual SourceSafe database is 4 GB.
Server-Based or Desktop-Based
VSS is a desktop based, self contained software. It does not depend on any other software to do it’s job.
TF is part of VSTS family and is a server based software that has several dependencies like IIS, SQL Server 2005, SharePoint Services etc.
VSS has 2 separate tools – VSS client and VSS Admin. The client tool provides the user interface to manage files. The Admin tools allow to manage the VSS database and users.
The TF has a server component (Team Foundation Server), but there is no client tool with a user interface. Instead of installing a client tool, you have to install a Visual Studio plug-in called ‘Team Explorer’. Team explorer appears within Visual Studio just like your Server Explorer window and allow you to connect to the Team Foundation Server.
Source Control and other features
VSS is a pure source control and version management system. The only purpose of Visual Source Safe is to control your source files and manage versions.
Team Foundation is a development collaboration tool with several functionality built into it. It allows you to control source code, manage versions, track changes, bugs, progress, generate project progress reports etc.
Complexity
VSS is ideal for small teams and small projects. VSTS provides the integrated collaboration tools required for large enterprise development teams.
VSS is easy to setup and configure. If you have installed any Microsoft products before, you will be able to install and configure VSS in less than one hour.
VSTS is advanced tool that has several dependencies and require lot of time to install and configure. Even if you have all the dependent software preinstalled, the installation and configuration of Team Foundation Server is bit complex.
While small teams may like to stay away from the complexity of VSTS, it is ideal for enterprise software development projects.
If you are using multiple tools for version control, bug tracking etc, it is a good idea to replace all of them with one tool that does everything for you – that is Visual Studio Team System.
Even though Microsoft claims that VSS will continue to exist as a separate product, it may not be 100% reliable. VSTS is the future software for configuration management for enterprise software development.
Team Location
Even though the latest version of VSS (Visual Source Safe 2005) allows HTTP based remote access to files, it is not the ideal tool for geographically distributed team.
If your team is spread across different locations (different cities/countries), VSTS is the ideal tool for your source control management. Its server-based nature is ideal for geographically distributed teams. Team Foundation Server’s communication algorithms were designed to support distributed locations. It also provides a caching system to minimize network traffic between distributed sites. Also, Team Foundation Server provides robust data storage with SQL Server 2005 in the central location.