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A comparison among six VSS remote tools including SourceOffSite ,
SourceAnyWhere, VSS Connect, SourceXT, VSS Remoting, VSS.NET

To view the full article, please visit
http://www.BetterVssRemoting.com

Better VSS Remote Access Tool

This article makes a detailed comparison among SourceAnyWhere 4.0,
SourceOffSite 4.1, VSS Connect 1.5, SourceXT 2.1, VSS Remoting 2.5,
VSS.NET 1.67

Keywords: VSS Remote Access, VSS Web Access, VSS Internet Access,
SourceSafe Remote Access, SourceSafe Web Access, SourceSafe Internet
Access, SourceAnyWhere, SourceOffSite, VSS Connect, SourceXT, VSS
Remoting, VSS.NET


1. Overview


What does the article do? It makes a comparison among:
· SourceAnyWhere 4.0
· SourceOffSite 4.1
· VSS Connect 1.5
· SourceXT 2.1
· VSS Remoting 2.5
· VSS.NET 1.67

Our initiative is to make an unbiased, objective, repeatable and
verifiable comparison:
a. Real project is used. The project I use is eMule, which is at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/emule/
b. Detailed steps are presented. You can follow the detailed steps
easily.
c. If you want to make a comment, I can be reached at
[Email]bettervssremoting@yahoo.com.[/Email]

If you need more info, please visit their official websites:

· SourceAnyWhere (SAW) from DynamSoft http://www.dynamsoft.com
· SourceOffSite (SOS) from SourceGear http://www.sourcegear.com
· VSS Connect from VoxCode http://www.vssconnect.com
· SourceXT from ACORDEN http://www.acorden.com
· VSS Remoting from Source Remoting http://www.sourceremoting.com
· VSS.NET from DMB Consulting http://www.dmbcllc.com
· Want to add a product? Write to me: bettervssremoting@yahoo.com

The real result may vary if you do the test in different environment or

different files are used. However, the basic concept of this
comparison,
such as which one is the fastest, which one has more VSS features,
should be applicable everywhere.

To view the full article, please go to
http://www.bettervssremoting.com


2. Comparison Summary (5 star ***** is the best)

Speed Comparison
SAW *****
SOS **
VSS Connect **
SourceXT **
VSS Remoting **
VSS.NET *

Stability Comparison
SAW *****
SOS **
VSS Connect ***
SourceXT **
VSS Remoting **
VSS.NET *


Security
SAW ****
SOS ***
VSS Connect ***
SourceXT **
VSS Remoting ***
VSS.NET **

VSS Feature Support
SAW ****
SOS ****
VSS Connect **
SourceXT **
VSS Remoting **
VSS.NET *

Usability
SAW ****
SOS **
VSS Connect **
SourceXT **
VSS Remoting **
VSS.NET *

Diff/Merge
SAW ****
SOS ****
VSS Connect
SourceXT
VSS Remoting **
VSS.NET

IDE Integration
SAW *****
SOS ***
VSS Connect **
SourceXT **
VSS Remoting **
VSS.NET

Cross Platform
SAW *****
SOS *****
VSS Connect *
SourceXT *
VSS Remoting ***
VSS.NET *

Speed:
I am totally surprised and excited by the speed of SourceAnyWhere. For
some operations, SourceAnyWhere can be up to 40+ times faster than
other five products.

Stability:
SourceAnyWhere never has any problem in the whole test.

SourceOffSite has several problems when it comes to stability. The big
problem of SourceOffSite is cancel. There is no cancel support in IDE
integration. After a cancel operation in Add, Checkin, Checkout or Get
in SourceOffSite Explorer, the CPU usage of SourceOffSite server goes
up to almost 100% and can not come down, unless the server is
restarted.
VSS Connect and SourceXT also have problems in stability. On big file
operations, they are very possible to crash. But both two have a good
handling of Cancel. And, VSS crashes every time when I try adding a
special directory such as "c:\" and "My Computer".

VSS Remoting has difficulty to add file and it fails to operate on big
files.

VSS.NET has problems in big file operation during the whole test. And
it cannot handle the Cancel operations.

Security:
What makes SourceAnyWhere unique is the password policy.

SourceAnyWhere, SourceOffSite and VSS Connect use 128-bit cryptography.


SourceOffSite and SourceAnyWhere use BlowFish.
.
VSS Remoting uses HTTPS.

VSS Feature Support:
Most of the six products support ordinary VSS features such as Add,
Get, Checkin, Checkout and so on. However, only SourceAnyWhere has a
detailed and full support for almost all of VSS features.
Except SourceAnyWhere, all the products does not have supports for EOL
(end-of-line). Different OS use different end-of-line characters in
text files. Without EOL support, text files got to local may not be
read correctly. For example, in Rational the EOL character is "/n"
but in Windows it is "/r/n". When getting a text file from Rational to
Windows without a support for EOL, the text will not be displayed
normally.

SourceXT, VSS Remoting and VSS.Net have no support for Pin. Assuming a
file is pinned in VSS Server, then what if Pin is not supported? First,
the pinned file can still be checked out by Client, which is a great
danger to the pinned file. Second, when performing a get, the most
recent version will be got, not the pinned version. This can probably
cause version confusion.

SourceAnyWhere has a "Server-base time zone offset" option, others
don't. In my opinion, it is very important to synchronize Server time
and Client time. Imagine this, the Server time is 10 hours ahead of
Client time. When you edit a file and check it in at 2/23 9:00PM
(Client time), but on the Server side, time of this version reads 2/24
7:00AM. So in the future when you need to get version of 2/23 9:00PM
actually, you may mistakenly get another version.

Usability:
SAW is the best. All the Windows of SAW is in Win32 style. It can
detect if a file is changed automatically.

Diff/Merge
In File Diff (2-way)/File Merge (3-way), SourceAnyWhere and
SourceOffSite run neck and neck; VSS Remoting has a low
performance

IDE Integration:
SourceAnyWhere, SourceOffSite and VSS Remoting all support MSSCCI
Integration.
VSS Remoting supports DreamWeaver integration

I have not tested the IDE integration intensively. I give this rate
just according to manual of the three products.


Cross Platform:
Besides its Windows client, SAW has a Java client built on JDK 1.4.2,
so that it can cross any platform where JDK can run such as Linux, Mac,
Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, SCO Unix and FreeBSD.
SourceOffSite can cross Linux and Mac OS X.

VSS Remoting has a web interface which can login server through web.


3. Test Environment

Test Data

Real project is used for test
All eMule0.44c and eMule0.44d files are downloaded from Sourceforge
Download eMule0.44c (3.1M) and eMule0.44d (3.1M) used in the test
Big Files are simulated files created by us

Server Configuration

· P4, 2.8G, 256M RAM, Windows XP Professional
· SourceAnyWhere profession 4.0 DEMO Server
· SourceOffSite4.1 with Cryptography DEMO Server
· VSS Connect Server 1.5
· SourceXT Server 2.1
· VSS Remoting Server 2.5
· VSS.NET Server 1.67
· Visual SourceSafe6.0 + Sp6
·
Client Configuration

· P4 Celeron 2.0G, 256M RAM, Windows 2003
· ADSL connection
· SourceAnyWhere profession 4.0
· SourceOffSite 4.1 with Cryptography
· VSS Connect Client 1.5
· SourceXT Client 2.1
· VSS Remoting Client 2.5
· VSS.NET Client 1.67

4. Test Methodology

All the three products are tested on the same computers and internet
connection

All the three products are tested on the same data set

All the three products are tested with the same process

For speed test, every action is carried out 5 times

The initial state of the VSS database is empty (newly created)