14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has made available for download an upgraded version (build 1.2) of the Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider, designed to deliver integrated use of Team Foundation Version Control for the products that lacked Team Explorer integration support.
?This tool enables a wide range of IDEs to access TFS. It is available for download and is for use by anyone who owns a Team Foundation Server Client Access License CAL either by purchasing a VSTS role product (e.g. Visual Studio Team System for Developers) or by purchasing a CAL directly,? revealed Brian Harry, Microsoft Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server.
What this means is that - via the enhancements introduced in this upgrade - multiple integrated development environments will be able to access Microsoft's collaboration server and benefit from application life-cycle management. The Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider enhancements will enable branched solutions in Visual Studio 2003 and support for TOAD for SQL Server 2.0. Apart from these extensions, Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider also resolved numerous issues from the past version, including the bug in Properties Dialog.
?The biggest improvement is in the area of branched projects. The experience is still not perfect but it is dramatically better than it was. The one issue that remains is that the first time you open a project/solution after branching it, you need to use Open from Source Control (can also be done by double clicking on it in the Source Control Explorer) rather than opening it from your local hard drive. This has to do with the way the underlying MSSCCI infrastructure works in Visual Studio and allows VS to fix up some of its references,? added Harry.
Microsoft additionally revealed that the supported IDEs have also been extended to comprise:
Visual Studio 2003 Visual Basic 6.0, SP6 Visual C++ 6.0, SP6 Visual FoxPro 9, SP1 Visual Studio .NET 2002 Microsoft Access 2003, SP2 SQL Server Management Studio 2005 Sparx Enterprise Architect 6.1 Sybase PowerBuilder 10.5 TOAD for SQL Server 2.0