A comparison among VSS Remote Access Tools including SourceOffSite, SourceAnyWhere and VSS Remoting

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Better VSS Remote Access Tool

This article makes a detailed comparison among SourceAnyWhere, SourceOffSite, VSS Remoting and possible others.

Keywords: VSS Remote Access, VSS Web Access, VSS Internet Access, SourceSafe Remote Access, SourceSafe Web Access, SourceSafe

Internet Access, SourceOffSite, SourceAnyWhere, VSS Remoting

Index

1. Overview
2. Comparison Summary
3. Test Environment
4. Test Methodology
5. Breakdown

5.1 Speed 5.2 Stability 5.3 Security 5.4 VSS Feature Support 5.5 Usability 5.6 Diff/Merge 5.7SCCI Integration 5.8 Cross Platform 6 Others

1. Overview

What does the article do? It makes a comparison among SourceAnyWhere

3.1, SourceOffSite 4.1 and VSS Remoting 2.5.

Our initiative is to make an unbiased, objective, repeatable and verifiable comparison: a. Real project is used. The project I use is eMule, which is at

b. Detailed steps are presented. You can follow the detailed steps easily. c. If you want to make a comment, I can be reached at snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com.

If you need more info, please visit their official websites:

SourceAnyWhere (SAW) from DynamSoft

SourceOffSite (SOS) from SourceGear VSS Remoting from Source Remoting Want to add a product? Write to me: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

The real result may vary if you do the test in different environment or different files are used. However, the basic concept

of this comparison, such as which one is the fastest, which one has more VSS features, should be applicable everywhere.

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1. Comparison Summary (5 star ***** is the best)

Speed Comparison SAW ***** SOS ** VSS Remoting **

Stability Comparison SAW **** SOS *** VSS Remoting **

Security SAW **** SOS *** VSS Remoting ***

VSS Feature Support SAW **** SOS **** VSS Remoting ****

Usability SAW **** SOS ** VSS Remoting **

Diff/Merge SAW **** SOS **** VSS Remoting **

IDE Integration SAW *** SOS *** VSS Remoting ****

Cross Platform SAW * SOS **** VSS Remoting ***

Speed: I am totally surprised and excited by the speed of SourceAnyWhere. For Get, Checkout and other operations, SourceAnyWhere can

be up to 40+ times faster than SourceOffSite and VSS Remoting.

Stability: SourceAnyWhere never has any problem in the whole test.

VSS Remoting has difficulty to add files.

SourceOffSite has several problems when it comes to stability. It fails often when I try to add big files. The big problem of

SourceOffSite is cancel. There is no cancel support in IDE integration. After a cancel operation in Add, Checkin, Checkout or

Get in SourceOffSite Explorer, the CPU usage of SourceOffSite server goes up to almost 100% and can not come down, unless the

server is restarted.

Security: What makes SourceAnyWhere unique is the password policy. All the products use 128-bit cryptography. SourceOffSite and SourceAnyWhere use BlowFish. VSS Remoting uses HTTPS.

VSS Feature Support: Weakness and strengths equally exist in them three.

Usability: SAW is the best. All the Windows of SAW is in Win32 style. It can detect if a file is changed automatically.

Diff/Merge In File Diff (2-way)/File Merge (3-way), SourceAnyWhere and SourceOffSite run neck and neck; VSS Remoting has a low performance

IDE Integration: SourceAnyWhere, SourceOffSite and VSS Remoting all support MSSCCI Integration. VSS Remoting supports DreamWeaver integration

I have not tested the IDE integration intensively. I give this rate just according to manual of the three products.

Cross Platform: SourceOffSite can cross most popular platforms, VSS Remoting has a web interface which can login server through web

1. Test Environment

Test Data

Real project is used for test All eMule0.44c and eMule0.44d files are downloaded from Sourceforge Download eMule0.44c (3.1M) and eMule0.44d (3.1M) used in the test Big Files are simulated files created by us

Server Configuration

P4, 2.8G, 256M RAM, Windows XP Professional SourceAnyWhere profession 3.1 DEMO Server SourceOffSite4.1 with Cryptography DEMO Server VSS Remoting Server 2.5 Visual SourceSafe6.0 + Sp6

Client Configuration

P4 Celeron 2.0G, 256M RAM, Windows 2003 ADSL connection SourceAnyWhere profession 3.1 SourceOffSite 4.1 with Cryptography VSS Remoting Client 2.5

1. Test Methodology

All the three products are tested on the same computers and internet connection

All the three products are tested on the same data set

All the three products are tested with the same process

For speed test, every action is carried out 5 times

The initial state of the VSS database is empty (newly created)

1. Breakdown

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