How To Make Your Life Easier With Sourceanywhere Standalone

By Author: Dy Namic
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Most developers are familiar with Visual SourceSafe.It's a popular version control tool for the Windows platform that offers essential version control features and helps promote team collaboration.While Visual SourceSafe (VSS) does some things well,it's not optimized for remote access and hampers developer productivity because it can be so slow.It also lacks critical security features,suffers from stability issues,and doesn't support multiple platforms.

Dynamsoft SourceAnywhere Standalone is a version control solution designed to replace VSS. It's a SQL-based application that offers all the functionality of VSS,plus a variety of additional features that make it a more comprehensive,reliable solution for software development teams.

This white paper offers an overview of why SourceAnywhere Standalone is a better choice than VSS for:

>> System Administrators
>> Developers
...
... >> Web Developers

10 Ways to Make Your System Administrator's Life Better

Promise Painless Installation

SourceAnywhere Standalone has very low system dependency.That means it doesn't need a framework,virtual machine runtime or web server to run.Your System Administrator will be able to get SourceAnywhere Standalone up and running in your organization in a matter of minutes.

Offer Effortless Backup

All your data is stored in SQL Server,with the exception of SourceAnywhere Standalone's service configuration and SQL Server connection parameters.This makes backup a snap.Simply use your favourite SQL Server backup tool,or you can write a script in SQL Server for automatic backup.

Because SQL Server supports online backup, you don't need to schedule a time to take your database offline to complete the backup.

Provide Reliable Remote Management

Thanks to the addition of a new 'Service Manager',the latest release of SourceAnywhere

Standalone lets you manage the application remotely.

Complete Scalability

What development team doesn't demand high performance and scalability? As your team and repository grow, there's no need to frequently upgrade your hardware because

SourceAnywhere Standalone scales to meet your ever-growing needs.

Lower Network Bandwidth Requirements

Bandwidth is always a concern for system administrators if remote access is involved.As such, SourceAnywhere Standalone employs technologies that cut down on bandwidth demands.An optional cache server can further boost remote access performance and improve productivity for distributed development teams.

Be Firewall Friendly

SourceAnywhere Standalone is firewall friendly.You can specify your own port for the server.Or,simply use HTTP port 80.

Make Database Migration Simple

If you're going to make the switch from VSS,it needs to be pain free.

SourceAnywhere Standalone includes a VSS database migration tool that makes the transition easy.

Provide Better Security

A downside of VSS is that it requires you to expose your VSS database file system to every user,and grants each user read and write permission for the entire repository.

This is a risky proposition.Security becomes even more compromised when VSS users work remotely and access the repository over Internet.

With SourceAnywhere Standalone you don't need to expose your repository's file system. Unlike VSS,our remote access feature uses a client/server architecture that does not publicly expose the file system--only the SourceAnywhere Standalone server interface is ever exposed.Additionally,you won't need a VPN for remote access because SSL is already built-in.

To further boost security,SourceAnywhere Standalone allows administrators to assign granular access privileges for each user.This policy-based access system minimizes the chance that users will accidentally or malevolently modify source code they shouldn't be working on.

If password strength is a concern,SourceAnywhere Standalone provides a robust password policy to help beef-up existing passwords.

Eliminate Database Analysis and Fixes

Breath easy knowing SourceAnywhere Standalone guarantees repository integrity.There's no need to analyze or fix the repository.

Offer Version Control Tools Unification

SourceAnywhere Standalone can unify version control tools across your entire organization.

It doesn't matter if your teams develop on Windows,Linux,Mac or another operating system,SourceAnywhere supports them all.

A Dozen Reasons Why Developers Should Switch to SourceAnywhere

There's Virtually No Learning Curve

If you're familiar with VSS you'll be able to start using SourceAnywhere Standalone right away.Its familiar UI minimizes the learning curve so that you can get started in a matter of minutes.

Easy Data Migration

We want you to switch,so we've included a VSS database migration tool that makes Easy Data Migration.
Faster Remote Access

SourceAnywhere Standalone is optimized for local and remote access so you won't have to wait to connect.

Sophisticated Project Versioning

VSS supports file versioning, but the functionality stops there.For example,if you make changes to a file in VSS and then check in,the file's version number goes up,but the version number of the parent project stays the same.This poses a problem.If you don't apply a label before checking in the file, it's virtually impossible to return the entire project back to the state it was in before the file was checked in.

SourceAnywhere Standalone supports both file and project versioning. That means whenever files or projects are changed, not only will the version numbers of current files and projects increase,but the version numbers of all parent projects--right back to the root--will increase accordingly.

You Get a True Version History

SourceAnywhere Standalone supports both file and project versioning,so it records all histories in your repository.You can access 'view', 'get', 'diff', 'label', 'branch', 'pin' and 'roll back' in the history.

Flexible History Search

SourceAnywhere Standalone offers flexible,sophisticated search.Search by: version or item, date range,user,file name,action type and comment.

Sophisticated Label Support

The label options are: assign a label to the latest version, or any old version; add items (file or project) to an existing label;remove items from an existing label;change version numbers of any items in an existing label;rename a label;delete the label;branch from the label,or visually view the structure of the label.

Better Branch/Merge Support

In SourceAnywhere Standalone you can branch from the latest version, an old version,or a labelled version.You can also merge the branches back because it remembers every merge and branch path.During the merge process,the version at the branch point is served as the base version.If any conflicts exist in the two different branches,a visual merge tool will be called to let you solve the conflict.

Enhanced Diff Support

Diff support lets you compare a working folder/file to the last version retrieved from the repository,the current version in the repository,any labelled file or project,any local file/folder,or any repository file/project.

Atomic Commit-No Lost Transactions

Transaction completion is always a concern with version control solutions.Rest easy,your data will never be half cocked,even when there's a server power failure.Because your operation is being carried out on SQL Server,it will either be completed or fully rolled back.

'Change Set' Support

In SourceAnywhere Standalone,one operation acts as a single 'change set'.That means no matter how many files or projects are included in an operation,the version number of the parent projects will only increase by one (1).Users can easily view which files and project are in a 'change set'in the Show History
dialog box.

IDE Integration

SourceAnywhere Standalone is 'Optimized for Microsoft Visual Studio.NET'certified.It also supports SQL Server stored procedure version control,Eclipse Plug-in on multiple platforms,and Dreamweaver on Windows.

Cross-Platform Support

In addition to a Windows client,a Java client enables developers to access code repositories from any operating system that supports the J2SE Java runtime environment,including Mac, Linux,and others.

Special Features for Web Developers

Differential Web Deployment

SourceAnywhere Standalone supports differential web deployment to local folders or remote FTP sites.This is beneficial because a common site can contain hundreds or even thousands of files.Using SourceAnywhere Standalone you can avoid the onerous task of uploading all the files to a web site.

In other cases,to reduce the number of the files to be uploaded to the web server,web developers or administrators may need to record which files have been changed since the last upload.SourceAnywhere's differential web deployment feature negates this time consuming and error prone process by detecting which files have been changed and which were added since the last upload.Then,it only uploads the files that need to be uploaded,automatically.It does this regardless of whether the web site is a local or a remote FTP site.

Multiple Web Sites Deployment

SourceAnywhere Standalone supports multiple web sites for one project,a useful feature when you're running a test site in addition to the production site.First,upload your web project to the test site.If you're happy with the results, upload it again to your production site.

Dreamweaver, Eclipse and Visual Studio Integration

Whether you use Dreamweaver,Eclipse,or Visual Studio,you can access your SourceAnywhere Standalone server without leaving your IDE.

Supports Windows, Mac and Other Platforms

SourceAnywhere Standalone supports multiple platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris and others.

Fast Image/Multimedia File Upload and Download

Image and multimedia files are often larger than source code and can take much longer to upload and download.SourceAnywhere Standalone uses Delta Transfer and compression to guarantee faster upload and download of your large files.

Dynamsoft Corporation is the leading developer of version control and issue tracking software applications. For more details on Source Code Control and Visual SourceSafe please visit our website.