Visual Studio 2008/2010 - Professional vs Team System

Question

Well, I know that this is not a programming issue, but I think it is really important to understand the differences in order to be a more productive developer ... so please do not close this question !! And yes, I feel stupid asking this question! Worked only with the publication of prof. VS 2005/2008.

Now that we have a team of 6 people, would I like the benefits of Team System to provide us with more than 6 VS Professional licenses? Also, what are the benefits of Team Foundation Server?

Answer 1

TFS is a great source management tool for every organization. And it is much better than Visual Source Safe. It also has work item management (for tasks) similar to Rational software. We have been using it for many years, and not just for .Net languages.

In the Team System version, you already have Team Explorer, in which your users can access the source control. Team System also consists of various routines designed for specific work functions, such as Team System for Development Edition (for developers), Team System Database Edition (for database architects), Team System Architect Edition (for system architect) and Team System Test Edition (For testers). All of these subversions are included in the Team Suite release.

For the Professional version, it can also be useful for the TFS source control system if the machine is installed with Team Explorer.

Answer 2

TFS can be good if you use work items and are interested in associating source changes with these work items. Otherwise, using it for a couple of weeks with a client (who did not use work items) simply made me return to subversion. Merging the user interface is not very good (to be polite), the VS plugin always wants to contact the TFS server to check for any changes to the files that you use, there are false warning about conflicts ...

Notice that I'm the guy who usually protects Microsoft from the Java / PHP guys, so it’s very strange for me to write this ...

Answer 3

The main difference between Professional and Team System is Team Foundation Server. Team Foundation Server is a massive overhaul / replacement of Visual SourceSafe. But TFS also provides you with other features, such as work item tracking and other functions for managing the full development life cycle.

Answer 4

The command system, even without a command server, has the ability to analyze the code and indicators for your code, which actually quantitatively determines how easy it is to maintain. For the project manager, this is nirvana, when you try to find out who is an excellent work on your code and for the developer, he gives him solid facts about where to improve the code.

I believe that Team Foundation Server can be crowded with a team of 6 people, except that you create an extremely large system.

Answer 5

Hey, thanks everyone for the answers so far! I have never worked in a team / collaborative environment before, so this is a little new to me. We are in the process of acquiring "Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition with MSDN Premium Subscription." I know this package is being updated to "Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN" on March 22, 2010.

Will I be able to use collaborative efforts using this package? Is $ 2970 worth the extra cost?

EDIT . We are applying for Empower for ISV. We work mainly on SaaS / RIA solutions. I correctly understand the term "Work item" - that is, if I want to instruct developer 1 to say XHTML / CSS, Developer 2 with a specific function module and Developer 3 with a different function module - each of them is considered a work item that can be easily tracked using VSTS ?

Answer 6

If you like Subversion or another version control manager, you don't mind using Nunit (or an alternative unit test tool) and you are familiar with or can find open source code tools (or board based) and you have a tracker mistakes, you can save a lot of money on licensing.

I worked a lot with Team System, and for some clients - only with the Pro Version. Although some TS integration suggestions are available, I'm so used to nUnit and Subversion that I actually skip them from time to time when working in TS.

Now in 2010, the Ultimate release offers an excellent UML diagram and code analysis tools that I will skip in lower versions.