SourceSafe Project Oriented Version Control SourceSafe by One Tree Software is a "project oriented version control system." SourceSafe doesn't try to write your program for you: it takes care of your maintenance and tracking responsibilities, freeing you up to concentrate on programming. More specifically, using SourceSafe can enhance your development productivity in six principal ways. 1. Team Coordination When more than one person is working together on a project, how do you keep track of who is doing what, when? If several developers attempt to modify the same file at the same time, they might wind up overwriting each other's changes! That can be disastrous. But policies to prevent it can be costly, inefficient, and difficult to enforce. Unless, that is, you use SourceSafe. With SourceSafe, each developer "checks out" a file before modifying it. Other developers still have access to the file, but they cannot check it out for modification. When the programmer is finished working on the file, he updates it back into SourceSafe, making the latest version immediately available to everybody. This simple system requires no time-consuming overhead, but it does provide an error-proof guarantee that one person will be modifying one file at one time. 2. File and Project Histories The name "version control" refers specifically to a product's ability to store old versions of a file. If you've updated a file ten times, SourceSafe can give you the most recent version, or any of the previous nine. And SourceSafe's advanced "reverse delta" storage mechanism ensures that storing all these versions doesn't use too much disk space: because SourceSafe stores only the changes you make each version, and then uses those changes to reconstruct old versions of your files on demand. But SourceSafe goes beyond simple file histories, and tracks the history of entire projects as well! Suppose a customer with version 2.00b of your program finds a bug. No problem--you used a SourceSafe "project label" to tag version 2.00b, and now SourceSafe can give you back exactly the files that made up the project at that time. Just build your program and start hunting! 3. Shared Code If you write a number of programs around a common base of "core code"; if you customize one program for different customers' needs; or if you write in an object-oriented language such as C++; then you know the power of reusable code. You can add a feature to one shared module, and immediately get the benefit in five different programs. But you also know the organizational issues: you have to remember what programs are using this file, and propagate every change to all the necessary places! That's why SourceSafe has built-in support for Shared files. You tell SourceSafe that your program wants to Share certain files from another program, and SourceSafe remembers that link. When you modify a file, it automatically propagates the change to all the projects that Share that file. And if you need to know which programs have been affected, SourceSafe gives you a report; so you always know what to recompile. 4. Accessible Interfaces You've got programs to write, deadlines to meet and customers to worry about. The last thing you need from your version control system is one more thing to worry about, a day-long installation process and tedious employee training sessions. That's why SourceSafe is as easy to use as it is powerful. Powerful installation systems and administrative interfaces mean you can have SourceSafe fully installed and ready for all your users in half an hour. An elegant interface patterned after the Windows File Manager, a straightforward command-line with no obscure parameters required for common actions, and extensive on-line help, mean that your users may never even use SourceSafe's detailed User's Manual. And best of all, the interface and command-line syntax are the same across all platforms, so you only have to learn SourceSafe once! 5. Multi-Platform Support If you're among the increasing number of companies who write one program for many different operating systems, you have a new problem--you need to maintain one centralized database of code, with full access from all your systems. That's why the SourceSafe versions for DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows/NT, OS/2, the Macintosh, and UNIX, are all 100% compatible. You can check out a file on your Macintosh, and your change will be reflected on another user's Windows screen. And cross-platform issues such as filename length, end-of-line characters, OS/2 extended attributes and the Macintosh resource file are handled by SourceSafe thoroughly, intelligently, and (most important) transparently. 6. The One Tree Guarantee There is no way for you to know how SourceSafe can improve your development environment until you try it. That's why One Tree Software always gives you the guarantees you need to feel absolutely secure. Like free, unlimited technical support to all registered users, and a reasonably priced maintenance plan to keep you up to date with the latest version of SourceSafe. It all adds up to a simple philosophy: you need long-term solutions to important development questions, and those solutions depend on the company that stands behind the product. One Tree Software is 100% committed to meeting all your needs, and to providing a level of customer service and support which matches the high level of quality in our products themselves. For more information about SourceSafe, contact One Tree Software today! ÿ