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Friday, February 15, 2002

I wanna be just like Mark when I grow up.....
I need a upstreaming driver for Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe. Suffice it to say that some of our internal sites use SourceSafe as a deployment tool. I want to publish to these sites using Radio. The simplest approach would seem to be building an upstreaming driver that will push my files into SourceSafe.
I have given this some thought and see several ways to build such a driver. Each has advantages and disadvantages. SourceSafe appears to offer three interfaces:

Visual user interface - I think this is not scriptable. Also, I really do not want the UI popping up during upstreaming operations.
COM interface - I think I once wrote another application using the COM interface to VSS; this is pretty workable, but Radio's support for COM is based on executing Javascript code. It works, but is not terribly elegant.
DOS command line - this is a very speedy interface, but will also be inelegant. Some of the driver's logic will be dependent upon the current state of SourceSafe (e.g. are we adding new files, or updating existing ones? each has different commands in VSS). That logic could end up split between Radio and a command shell script.
Another possibility has just occurred to me. The COM interface will be a lot easier to use from some Microsoft environment that provides better COM integration. I could do this in, say, C# - exposed as a web service! That is easily accessible from Radio. The only real downside is that this is not a terribly useful approach for anybody not working in a .NET environment. Then again, maybe I should focus first on solving my own problem before worrying about whether anybody else even cares.
I have other things to do first today so I will let this roll around a bit before making a decision. If you really need a VSS upstreaming driver, let me know. It will definitely have an impact on my decision. [On The Mark]
5:40:29 PM

I like what Dave and Brent has to say on this topic.
David Kurtz: "Just drink the kool-aid, ok?" Try again. [Scripting News]
5:39:13 PM

Brent Simmons: "Iâve often wondered about the kind of mind that canât like two things, that has always to proclaim one is great and the other evil." [Scripting News]
5:38:22 PM

I have been playing around with Dave's DIY Web Services (which is really cool) and Sam Ruby's Busy Developer's Guide to WSDL (also cool). Sam has put together a fantastic guide for understanding WSDL. Great job!!! I must confess that I still do not love WSDL, but at least Sam's guide makes it much easier to understand and, I hope, write for myself. [On The Mark]
5:38:05 PM