Vault Server 4.12 as CVS Server

[Tri]

Hi,

One of our Dev Team uses Oracle's SQL Developer tool which has CVS and Subversion interfaces built in for versioning. The Team Lead ask if it is possible to expose our Vault Server 4.12 in a way CSV or Subversion client can interface with. Can you please let me know how to implement this?

Thanks in advance.

[Beth]

You would probably want to have something call either the Vault command line client or connect using the API. There are examples of working with the API in the Development Tips section of the forum. You can request additional examples there as well.

Will that fit what you need?

[Tri]

Hi,

Here is Oracle SQL Developer: http://www.oracle.com/technology/softwa ... index.html
Attached is the image that shows the Versioning Menu of SQL Developer.

I assume the developers guys meant they would like to interact SQL Developer with Vault Server 4.12 the same way than Visual Studio 2005/2008 with Vault Server 4.12. This means when we want to Get latest, check in / out, Compare, etc. we right click the file and we select the corresponding menu item.

How should we use the Vault command line client or the API to make this happen?

Thanks in advance.

[Beth]

There's a few different ways to go about this. You might find this forum thread useful: SQL Object Management.
What we do here is manage our SQL objects through Visual Studio.

We do have some users who integrate directly with SQL Server Management Studio, because it's IDE is similar to the one for Visual Studio, but we don't support that integration. You would have to try it out to see if it gives you what you want.

I'm sure you could write something yourself as well using the Vault API if you preferred.

[Beth]

One other item, when I was mentioning SQL Management Studio, I was assuming there's a similar way to integrate with Oracle. You could try making Vault you default SCC provider and use the Classic Client to see what your results are. We don't support it with Oracle either, but you might want to still check it out.

[Tri]

SQL Server Management Studio 2005 and 2008 works OK with VS integration, Enhanced Client. The only trouble is when you remove (exclude an item from the solution, not delete it) the VS integration deletes the item from Vault Server. The users who integrate SQL Server Management Studio with Vault server, probably did nothing to make it work. Just use it the same way as for Visual Studio 2005/2008. At least this is what I do.

The SQL Management Object thread you mention is something else, the poster suggested the idea of using Vault to source control DB objects, and he suggested to use SMO (to generate the mergeable text) + Vault API (to do versioning). If I understand him well, he wanted to automate versioning of DB objects without generating the script everytime

The question here is related to SQL Developer which is a kind of tool to works with DB, pretty much comparable with SQL Server Management Studio. The fact that it connects with Oracle has nothing to do with Vault Server. You can very well use SQL Developer to connect to SQL Server 2005. SQL Developer work with files which are mostly scripts which are are text base, the same way than SQL Server Management does with the *sql scripts. So these files are ready to be source controled. The only issue is how to make it talk to the Vault Server.

SQL Developer is a freeware created by Oracle, it runs under Java and it doesn't use the Visual SourceSafe API to talk to Source Control Server. Instead it seems like it use CVS or SubVesion API.

What I would like to know is a high level answer:

Q1. For a dev tool to be compatible with Vault Server, should the dev tool author need to implement Vault API in their product specifically? Because Vault Server can only understand a precise API.

Q2. Or is Vault Server more generic, a product has an interface for a source control, which happen to be CVS and Subversion. May be Vault Server has a multi-facette interface so it could also accommodate with these clients.

I hope that you would answer YES to Q2. And if so, how to implement it? Other than writing ourselve the interface between SQL Developer and Vault Server. Otherwise, we'd probably go faster to install a SubVersion server.

[ian_sg]

SQL Server Management Studio 2005 and 2008 works OK with VS integration, Enhanced Client. The only trouble is when you remove (exclude an item from the solution, not delete it) the VS integration deletes the item from Vault Server. The users who integrate SQL Server Management Studio with Vault server, probably did nothing to make it work. Just use it the same way as for Visual Studio 2005/2008. At least this is what I do.

I'm confused by this statement, particularly this: "when you remove (exclude an item from the solution, not delete it) the VS integration deletes the item from Vault Server." This shouldn't be true, and isn't, based on a quick test.

However, it's not clear to me if you're talking about Visual Studio and the Enhanced Client, or SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and the classic client. Can you clarify? If you're talking about Visual Studio and the Enhanced Client, in what type of project do you see this behavior?

[Tri]

Sorry for the confusion. I was talking about SSMS 2005 & 2008.
I had reported the bug here: http://support.sourcegear.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10801

I have just made a test to confirm. It turns out that I made a mistake. I apologize for the incorrect report and I will correct the original post accordingly. SSMS Project is slightly different than VS2005 / VS2008. There is only one option "Remove" instead of "Exclude from project" and "Delete" like in Visual Studio.

In SSMS, when you select Remove, then there is a second screen that give the choice "Remove" or "Delete", when you click on "Remove" then there is a 3rd screen which asks:

1- "Delete the item locally and in the source control store"
2- "Only delete the item locally"

Strangely enough, the default choice for "Remove" is set to the 1st one (that I admit I didn't check as wouldn't have suspected that the designer of SSMS would make this confusing default choice). That is why all files are gone. For today test, I read each screen and notice the options in the 3rd screen. Selecting "Only delete the item locally" actually means "Exclude from Project", the local file is still there.

As for my original question of the post (the 2 Qs two posts above), do you have any hint? In the mean time, I will ask Oracle tech support too.

Thanks in advance.

[jeremy_sg]

We don't have any plans currently to have layers that present a CVS or SVN server interface and talk to Vault. Assuming that the tool is using the CVS command line tool, it may be possible to create a CVS command-line compatible command line tool that calls Vault client libraries under the hood. Do you know if the Oracle SQL tool uses the CVS command line client?