Preface

Software Configuration Management (SCM) is one of the first skills a serious developer should master, after becoming proficient with his or her development tools of choice. Unfortunately this doesn't always happen because the subject of SCM is not commonly taught in academic or company training.

Although software is not a material thing, as you cannot touch it, smell it, or taste it, building software can be as complex as building physical things such as cars or planes, if not more so. The main difference between the two worlds lies in the limitations you confront. In the world of developing software there are no physical limitations—the only limit is your imagination.

However, all this freedom can have a downside. A good TV commercial once stated "Power is nothing without control"—if you do not control it wisely, it may start working against you. When developing software, you need to have a manageable team development effort, track and maintain the history of your projects, sustain parallel development on multiple product versions, fix bugs, and release service packs while further developing the applications.

This is where the concept of Software Configuration Management (SCM) comes into play, dealing among other things with source code versioning, tracking development evolution, building, and releasing. Putting it in simple terms, SCM is about getting the job done safer, faster, and better.

While trying to keep the theory to a minimum, this book starts by teaching you what SCM is, why it is important, and what benefits you get by using it, either by working individually or by being part of a team. You will find this part very valuable if you're new to the concept of SCM, because you will be setting your base for understanding what happens in the rest of the book.

Then the book concentrates on the Microsoft Visual SourceSafe 2005 SCM tool and the best practices used to manage the development and evolution of Visual Studio .NET 2005 applications. You will learn the theory by going through a journey, in which we will actually develop a new application, starting from designing its specifications and ending with releasing it and completing the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC).

You will learn how the SCM concepts are applied by Visual SourceSafe 2005 by developing Orbital Hotel, a Service-Oriented Application hotel reservation system. You will learn how to use the team cooperation features in Visual SourceSafe 2005 with the help of John and Mary, two fictional team members who have been assigned to implement various project components.

The end of the book deals with SourceSafe administration tasks. It describes SourceSafe database creation, management, and maintenance, how to secure the database, how to create users and assign user rights, and how to manage projects and project settings.

Additional material on how to customize SourceSafe to suit your development style is available at http://www.packtpub.com/visual-sourcesafe-2005/book. You can visit Orbital Hotel online at http://orbitalhotel.alexandruserban.com/.

I hope you will find this book a great resource about Visual SourceSafe 2005, and I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!