Keeping source code organized and under control can be a major developer headache, especially in a team environment. With so many busy fingers all trying to work on components of a project at once, figuring out who did what, and when, and keeping people from scribbling all over their colleagues' work, can be close to impossible without some way to guard the code.

That's where change management comes in, including tools like Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS).

Over the years, many teams have relied on VSS to maintain file change histories, audit trail logs, and to preserve multiple versions of the code itself. They've developed large repositories of source, stashing it safely on a server and only allowing it to be accessed under controlled conditions.

But the somewhat elderly VSS 6 had issues. It didn't handle large data stores well, for example. It couldn't cope with time zones, so dispersed teams had to set their system clocks to one zone. And it was sometimes cranky; getting old does that to you.

Nonetheless, its successor, VSS 2005, has been greeted with some trepidation. Would the new version mean horrendous database migrations? Would it mess up existing repositories? Is it worth the aggravation of upgrading?

The answers to those questions, according to Microsoft Canada's senior product manager, developer solutions Jeff Zado, are no, no, and maybe.

No, there are no horrendous database migrations. VSS 2005 uses precisely the same database format as does VSS 6.

No, it doesn't mess up existing repositories. Upgraders simply install VSS 2005 into its own directory, then copy the existing VSS repository over, or point VSS 2005 at it, and they're in business. The new version will coexist happily on the same computer as VSS 6.

Microsoft does recommend uninstalling VSS 6 first, because removing it later will break VSS 2005 integration with Visual Studio. If you must run the two side-by-side, however, you can run a repair on VSS 2005 after you uninstall the old version to fix the Registry and restore the integration.

And maybe it's worth the aggravation of upgrading... if the new features are useful to you.

What new features?

Some users have accused VSS 2005 of being a smoke and mirrors upgrade. Said one newsgroup post, "I do think that VSS 2005 doesn't bring much more to the table than a prettier splash screen, .NET extensibility APIs, and some increased numbers (more transfer mechanisms, bigger files, etc)." However, there's a bit more to it than that.

The UI has been modernized, to be sure, and the maximum database size increased to 4GB, but there's also Unicode and XML support, the time zone problem is fixed (along with a bunch of other bugs), and you can use Visual Studio to connect to your VSS data store from anywhere you have http or https Web access. There are new automation features, and a new plug-in editor/viewer. You'll find more information in the Microsoft VSS roadmap, here.

If you're greeting those enhancements with a yawn, maybe the upgrade isn't for you. Then the question arises, is VSS the right product for you, in any form?

Said Zado, "People need to understand that VSS is for small development teams that are not geographically dispersed. It's a local solution (not a server). Clients have to look at the challenges they're facing and compare them to the feature set of the new release."

He went on, "To me, VSS is a great product. We get complaints about it from customers when it's used for things it wasn't meant for."

But maybe, Zado suggested, what you really need is the new Visual Studio Team Foundation Server's (TFS) change control. Migration to it from VSS is a bit more challenging, because there are some differences in functionality, and in this case you do have to do some preparation and database conversion (Microsoft provides detailed walkthroughs, and a conversion tool that handles much of the donkey work). But since TFS is a client-server application talking to a SQL Server database, it's more robust than VSS. And for the budgetarily challenged, TFS Workgroup Edition, which supports up to five users, is included with any Visual Studio Team Edition product. If you're curious, you'll find a 180 day evaluation version of TFS here.