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Reasons to Switch from SourceSafe: How to Make Your Life Easier with SourceAnywhere

SourceAnywhere is an agile Source Control tool Designed for Local and Remote Development Teams

A Dozen Reasons Why Developers Should Switch

There's Virtually No Learning Curve

If you're familiar with VSS you'll be able to start using SourceAnywhere right away. Its familiar UI minimizes the learning curve so that you can get started in a matter of minutes.

Easy Data Migration

We want you to switch, so we've included a VSS database migration tool that makes your transition as easy and straightforward as possible. The tool guarantees that the entire history of your projects will be safe.

Faster Remote Access

SourceAnywhere is optimized for local and remote access so you won’t have to wait to connect to SourceAnywhere.

Sophisticated Project Versioning

VSS supports file versioning, but the functionality stops there. For example, if you make changes to a file in VSS and then check in, the file's version number goes up, but the version number of the parent project stays the same. This poses a problem. If you don’t apply a label before checking in the file, it's virtually impossible to return the entire project back to the state it was in before the file was checked in.

SourceAnywhere supports both file and project versioning. That means whenever files or projects are changed, not only will the version numbers of current files and projects increase, but the version numbers of all parent projects--right back to the root--will increase accordingly.

You Get a True Version History

SourceAnywhere supports both file and project versioning, so it records all histories in your repository. You can access 'view', 'get', 'diff', 'label', 'branch', 'pin' and ‘roll back' in the history.

Flexible History Search

SourceAnywhere offers flexible, sophisticated search. Search by: version or item, date range, user, file name, action type and comment.

Sophisticated Label Support

The label options are endless: assign a label to the latest version, or any old version; add items (file or project) to an existing label; remove items from an existing label; change version numbers of any items in an existing label; rename a label; delete the label; branch from the label, or visually view the structure of the label.

Better Branch/Merge Support

In SourceAnywhere you can branch from the latest version, an old version, or a labeled version. You can also merge the branches back because it remembers every merge and branch path. Here's how it works. During the merge process, the version at the branch point is served as the base version. If any conflicts exist in the two different branches, a visual merge tool will be called to let you solve the conflict.

Enhanced Diff Support

Diff support lets you compare a working folder/file to the last version retrieved from the repository, the current version in the repository, any labeled file or project, any local file/folder, or any repository file/project.

Atomic Commit-No Lost Transactions

Transaction completion is always a concern with version control solutions. Rest easy, your data will never be half cocked, even when there's a server power failure. Because your operation is being carried out on SQL Server, it will either be completed or fully rolled back.

'Change Set' Support

In SourceAnywhere, one operation acts as a single 'change set'. That means no matter how many files or projects are included in an operation, the version number of the parent projects will only increase by one (1). Users can easily view which files and project are in a 'change set' in the Show History dialog box.

IDE Integration

SourceAnywhere is 'Optimized for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET' certified. It provides seamless version control integration with Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010.

It also supports SQL Server stored procedure version control, Eclipse Plug-in on multiple platforms, and Dreamweaver on Windows.

Cross-Platform Support

In addition to a Windows client, a Java client enables developers to access code repositories from any operating system that supports the J2SE Java runtime environment, including Mac, Linux, and others.

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