Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)

Score8 out of 10

9 Reviews and Ratings

What is Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued)?

Visual SourceSafe is a discontinued source control software offering, from Microsoft.

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Categories & Use Cases

Version Control

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (Discontinued).

Based on HG Insights installation data

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#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

97 installations of 392

#2 most frequent

Manufacturing

68 installations of 392

#3 most frequent

Information

56 installations of 392

Kyle Kochtan View profile

Technical Lead in Information Technology at Newell Rubbermaid (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

At this point in its lifecycle there are not many things VSS does well
Its main strength would be its ability to be self contained on a local drive
It is a basic Code repository

Cons

VSS is prone to corruption causing the DB to have to be rebuilt
It does not perform well if you have a lot of code in it it will be very slow
No searching basic tree structure

Return on Investment

There were many benefits years ago when this product first came out
Now there is only risk for an enterprise
The corrupted DB issues have cost hundreds of man hours to correct

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS), Apache Subversion and GitHub

Other Software Used

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS), GitHub, Apache Subversion

Cristian Bodnarasec View profile

Senior Software Development Manager in Information Technology at eSilicon (501-1000 employees employees)

Pros

The integration with Visual Studio is its best asset for developers using Visual Studio for software development.
File versioning - creates file versions with notes.
Ability to add tags to create a project version.
Ease of administration.

Cons

The system stability could be improved. Often we get file corrupted errors.
The User Interface is not modern and not user-friendly.
Concurrent check-outs could be added, allowing more people to work on the same file at the same time.
Add conflict resolution, files comparison, blame file, features that any modern source control program should have.

Return on Investment

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.

Alternatives Considered

Git and Bitbucket

Luca Campanelli View profile

Senior Betting & Online DB Administrator in Information Technology at Intralot Italia S.p.A.- Gamenet Group (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

avoid losing code
versioning of previous projects
saving versions on db

Cons

sometimes there are problems with check-in and checkout if done simultaneously
the user interface is not really nice
only source control

Return on Investment

gains in avoiding loss of code
gains in terms of hours spent on development
gains in terms of time saved

Alternatives Considered

Team Foundation Server

Verified User

Manager in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

It has outlived most of the competition out there.
It's good at maintaining exclusive locks.
It's good at being kept on a network share.

Cons

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.

Return on Investment

We've lost a lot of hours rebuilding our solution based on lost work/corrupted files.
Only having a single person work on a single file has killed performance
No CI/CI capabilities and had to find other ways to do the process.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Azure DevOps (formerly VSTS)

Other Software Used

Azure API Management, Azure Bot Service, Azure Logic Apps