Diferences in SOS and VSS directly?

jessie · Post by **jessie** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 9:57 am

I need to finds out what functionality is NOT availabel through SOS that IS available through VSS directly? Thanks.

lbauer · Post by **lbauer** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 6:07 pm

SourceOffSite supports most VSS operations. Label promotion is not supported. Getting a file by label from the command line client is not supported. Get by label of multiple files with the same label at the project level is not supported.

Perhaps if you told me which operations are important in your development, I will be able to tell you whether or not SourceOffSite supports those.

Another option is for you to try our free 30 day demo download to see how SourceOffSite works for you.

jessie · Post by **jessie** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 6:17 pm

We already are using SourceOffsite for offshore and consulting development. However, ongoing I am trying to decide whether inhouse developers should use the VSS client or SOS... and if we use SOS exclusively what functionality will not be available.

i.e. Rather than having a list of things we need to have - I am more looking to the future without knowing what we might need but wanting to check off things we will not need.

So, is there not a list of what is NOT included functionality?

lbauer · Post by **lbauer** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 5:54 am

Sorry, we don't have a definitive list. You could open SOS and VSS clients side by side and compare menu items.

SOS does not have some of the search functionality of VSS, like Find in Files. Most of the important features are available, like Get, Checkout, Checkin, Diff, History, etc.

ssccoorrcchhiioo · Post by **ssccoorrcchhiioo** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 11:44 am

This might be a bit late for the the person posing the question and I am far from an expert in SOS. But in case anyone else has the same question here are a few differences that spring to mind (all of which are a nuisance) ...

- SOS can only check out to the working folder, in VSS a dialog pops up to ask you where to check out to;
- Can only check in from where a file was checked out to;
- Linking is completely different -in VSS you just drag-n-drop a file from one project to another, on SOS (where it's called sharing) you have to open a dialog and wait for a select list to be populated;
- SOS only has status search (can't search by file name let alone file name with wildcards or find in files);

The first two points mean that if you use VSS directly and have created your own project structure (rather than integrated into an IDE which takes care of the project structure) then you will find you will need to change how you work.

lbauer wrote:Sorry, we don't have a definitive list. You could open SOS and VSS clients side by side and compare menu items.

SOS does not have some of the search functionality of VSS, like Find in Files. Most of the important features are available, like Get, Checkout, Checkin, Diff, History, etc.

lbauer · Post by **lbauer** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 12:12 pm

Thanks. These are differences that might affect users more than the ones I would have thought of. While there may be differences in the feature set, there are also some differences in the way features are implemented. Some of this is due to the fact that the SOS Server communicates with the VSS database through the SourceSafe Automation component, which has its limits in terms of functionality.