Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs. Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)

We use SQL Compare to troubleshoot performance problems quite a bit since our data model is more like a template and not everything is 100% in sync and customization occurs between different client databases. We continually get pulled into performance issues and the developers will say Client A is performing different than Client B, why? Using SQL Compare, we usually find that one client was tuned and had indexes altered or added that weren't deployed to all clients or other objects weren't deployed correctly during the release. On the other hand, since our data model practices allow client databases to drift I tried to create a new golden image by trying to compare multiple databases based on the same data model and found it to be a very difficult process to complete using SQL Compare. SQL Compare gave me too much information and doesn't allow enough filtering to eliminate a lot of the noise.

Incentivized

The only time I could recommend Microsoft Visual SourceSafe would be for a beginner who has a small amount of code that they would like to keep track of. This solution would not be recommended for an enterprise or any shop where you have multiple developers working on the same solution.

Incentivized

• Simple and easy comparison of database schemas and data. Differences can be copied or synced from one database to another with a click of a button.
• You can save "projects" so that you can easily rerun a previous comparison whenever you need to.
• It has a very simple, easy to learn interface. I've never needed to read any documentation or watch any tutorials in order to figure out how to do something.

Incentivized

• avoid losing code
• versioning of previous projects
• saving versions on db

Incentivized

• Pricing.... I wish there was an inexpensive developer version I could buy for myself.
• Portability.... I would like to use it from a flash drive so I can use it where ever I am asked to work.
• Unbundled.... This may be available already but I dont' recall I can buy it cheaply as a stand-alone product. Its only part of the bundle - cost effectively.

Incentivized

• Becoming corrupt and having to be rebuild from a previous version.
• It can be extremely slow to check in & out of.
• Lost support several years ago from Microsoft.

It's a good tool to have, but becomes expensive to buy a user license for each developer.

Incentivized

Overall Microsoft Visual Source Safe is very easy to use. It is a simple application that does only one thing. It has the basic windows tree structure for listing projects and solutions. There is no way to search for a particular file, project or solution. There is also no way to search the code in the files.

Incentivized

They have a great community website where you can search for answers but are also very responsive when it comes to direct support.

Incentivized

There is no longer support for Visual SourceSafe as I believe it's been retired. There are, however, users that still use the tool and they do help if there are questions or complaints.

I've used Visual Studio Database Projects for this type of work in the past with some success, but Redgate SQL Compare is faster, more transparent, and simply easier to use. Faster is self explanatory. More transparent, means that it's much easier to set up your desired options for schema change deployment scripts. Easier to use, It's really dead simple. Start a project, connect your source, connect destination, click compare.

Incentivized

Azure DevOps is a much better, more modern tool that Visual SourceSafe and everyone should be moving to it. Most if not all the integration that is there can be done or emulated in it

• Makes deployment fairly simple. Cutting our deployment time down.
• With the SDK, we can customize our deployment process very quickly and easily.
• History is not great, it does create scripts you can go back and see but it would be nice to have a quicker version view by object to save time.

Incentivized

• When we started using it, it allowed us to do source code versioning and store the code in a centralized location and not locally.
• We are using it for very few projects with few developers that still maintain those applications and do not have time to merge the source code to Git.

Incentivized