IBM SC34-4499-03 manual Appendix G. Source Code Control Users Guide, Projects vs Families, 267

Appendix G. Source Code Control User's Guide

Differences between other source code control providers and TeamConnection

The purpose of this document is to help Visual Basic, Visual C++, and PowerBuilder users, make TeamConnection their Visual environments source code control provider. This document assumes the reader is a new user of TeamConnection, but has some familiarity with source code control.

Note: This component is for a client operating in a Windows 95 or NT environment. However, it may accept ®les from other environments providing the Win platforms can access them.

The following shows the version level supported by TeamConnection:

vPowerBuilder 5.0.04 or higher

vVisual Basic version 5.0 with SP2 applied

vVisual C++ version 5.0

Projects vs Families

Most source code control providers group all code into projects. TeamConnection uses an object oriented approach that provides much more control over the software product while allowing greater ¯exibility. Projects have one dimension of control. Development environments like Visual Basic group all of their ®les into projects. Using projects to group source code has several limitations. First, the source code control system is limited to providing just version control. While version control is useful, once the enterprise-size organization is reached, it is often not sufficient to control just versions of the source code. TeamConnection provides not only versioning but defect and feature tracking, build and driver management, access control, and much more. TeamConnection uses families, releases, components, and work areas for management and control.

TeamConnection uses several layers of control. The highest level is the family. The family is the name of the data base, where TeamConnection stores all of the code, the versions, and all other information related to the code. A family represents a complete and self-contained collection of TeamConnection users and development data. Data within a family is completely isolated from data in all other families. One family cannot share data with another. It is important to know the name of the family where TeamConnection will store your code and associated information.

A part in TeamConnection is a collection of data that is stored by the family server. This can include ®les, text, objects, binary objects, or modeled objects. Parts can be stored by a user, a tool, or generated from other parts, such as when a linker generates an executable ®le.

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