Using Source Control Functionality

Teamwork is a very important advantage for source control. By working with a team of developers, you can create complex applications quickly. The blend of development team with different skill-sets can create applications that would be difficult or impossible for a single developer to achieve.

However, team development requires extra effort in the development process. Successful team development depends on:

Allowing several developers to work with the different databases or different database objects within the same database, all with complete source control.
Coordinating the changes that are made to the same database elements, so that one developer's changes don't overwrite those from another developers.

SQLSourceSafe can help you to achieve the teamwork goal.

Create Visual SourceSafe Project from SQL Server Database Items

You specify both SourceSafe Configuration information and SQL Server database information at the connection wizard. If the Visual SourceSafe project name does not exist in the Visual SourceSafe database repository, SQLSourceSafe will create the Visual SourceSafe project. All SQL Server database items will be added to the SourceSafe project.

Create Database Items on SQL Server From SourceSafe Project

If there is no such a SQL Server database with the name as the Visual SourceSafe project name, the connection wizard will pop up a message box saying “The database XXX does not exist, do you want to create the database?” If you click on the OK button, the database will be created. To create SQL Server database items from SourceSafe project, right click on the root node on the SourceSafe Pane of SQLSourceSafe’s main window. Then select Get Latest Version option from the context menu. The SQL Server database items will be created using the items from the selected Visual SourceSafe project.

Check In and Out

When you open project in SQLSourceSafe, it initializes all the connections with current source control state. Each database item may be in one of three different states:

Not Checked Out, the tree node label in black color. The SQL Server item is black as well.
Checked Out, the tree node label in red color and icon is circled by red as well. On the SourceSafe Pane, the user who checked out the item is displayed. The item can be modified on the SQL Server Pane by the user who checked out this item.
Newly Added SQL Database Item. It only appears on the SQL Server Pane, as it does not exist in Visual SourceSafe yet. The tree node is displayed in blue color. The item can be added into Visual SourceSafe.

You may perform various operations to database items, such as check out, check in, undo check out, get latest version, get history, compare version, or label code. This functionality is accessible from the application main menu, toolbar and context menu (by right clicking the selected item on the SourceSafe Pane).

CAUTION! SQLSourceSafe will drop the destination table if the Check Out or Get Latest Version option is used for a table item.

Item History

To ensure that each version of a database item is recoverable, SQLSourceSafe provides version control and history services, by leveraging the source control capability from Visual SourceSafe. The date/time stamp is used to record when files are created or checked in.

You have access to database item history through SourceSafe\Show History dialog box.

Figure 1. Source Control History for selected database item

At the History window, you may either preview each historic version using View, or get it as current version of the database item through Get.

Show Difference

The SQLSourceSafe can compare item in different versions in SourceSafe or compare the item in SourceSafe and in SQL Server database.

Figure 2. Show difference of selected item in SourceSafe and in SQL Server.

Delete database items

Like SourceSafe, each item in the SourceSafe Pane can be deleted. When one item is deleted, all history that associating with the object is deleted as well.