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Extending Visual Studio Team System
Visual Studio Team System reshapes the playing field for those who have integrated their tools with Visual Studio in the past. Tim Anderson examines the terrain while Matt Nicholson talks to software companies that have adapted.
Author: Tim Anderson
Last updated: Apr 2005
Earlier versions of Visual Studio did not address the issue of software lifecycle management tools, except in a limited way with Visual SourceSafe. That gap has created a strong market for third parties to integrate tools covering modelling, requirements analysis, change management, testing and source code management into the Visual Studio environment. However with Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), Microsoft is making its own dramatic entry into software lifecycle management tools. Rob Straight from Compuware discusses DevPartner Studio.
On the face of it, this could weaken the third-party market. That said, many Visual Studio developers have not gone beyond SourceSafe. Vendors like Borland, with its Together modelling products, believe that VSTS will help them by promoting awareness of how such tools can help.
Furthermore, VSTS offers many new extension possibilities. Here Microsoft distinguishes between the Team Foundation platform, and the new tools. The platform includes work item tracking, project management, source code management and integration services, while the additional tools cover design and modelling, the build system, and code analysis and testing. Third parties can build new tools that work with Team Foundation Server, or extend Microsoft’s tools with new features.
There is also the possibility of offering new Project Templates supporting methodologies other than those provided by Microsoft, as Conchango is doing (see over page). There are interesting parallels here with what is happening in the Java world with Eclipse. Eclipse is an open-source IDE that is widely supported as a platform for extension by third-parties. On the Microsoft platform, VSTS potentially provides an equally extensible platform.
VSTS does provide a rich set of services. The data tier provides a reporting warehouse into which third parties can feed their own data. Vendors can design their own OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) reports and combine their data with standard Team System data. The Project Site is can be extended with custom web parts, while the base unit of Team System, the Work Item, can be extended with new types and properties.
There is also an event model in Team System. New tools can raise events and subscribe to existing events raised by the system. Team System also manages users, groups and permissions, providing an authorisation service that third parties can call on.
The features built into Team System are valuable, but cannot meet every need. Microsoft has a class modeller, but does not support UML modelling. Other companies have static code analysis tools and profilers that address different problems to those covered by Microsoft. With Team System such tools can become part of the test process: for example, a project manager can stipulate a third-party test as a check-in requirement in the same way as for a built-in test.
Microsoft has upped the stakes for third parties. There is no point in duplicating what Microsoft has already built into VSTS, but there is plenty of scope to go beyond it, as indeed the following companies are already doing:
Lori Wizdo of Identify Software on integrating AppSight into VSTS.
Serena Software's Stephen Pisenti on change management.
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Introduction to Visual Studio Team System Rob Straight from Compuware discusses DevPartner Studio Lori Wizdo of Identify Software on integrating AppSight into VSTS