Vault Professional has been designed to make a seamless transition from SourceSafe and, at the same time, add many improvements. This has resulted in the following differences.
History Explorer Window
The History dialog is replaced by a top-level, non-modal window that allows browsing the repository history through queries. It also does not include a destructive delete function except in the Admin Web Client, where it is called Obliterate.
Branch exists separately from Share.
In SourceSafe, Branch can only be performed after a Share operation, but Vault Professional allows a Branch operation to happen by itself. The functionality is equivalent.
Atomic Check Ins and Check Outs
Add and Delete operations can be scheduled to happen as part of the next check in. Options exist that allow you to specify whether the operations happen immediately, or whether they are included with the next transaction.
SQL Server database
Vault Professional’s repository is stored in SQL Server rather than a collection of files in an undocumented format.
Request Exclusive Lock
In lieu of Allow Multiple Checkouts, Vault Professional has Request Exclusive Lock. The sense of the option is reversed and the default is to not request exclusive locks on files which are considered to be mergeable.
We have changed the following terms:
In Vault Professional, “Repository” (SourceSafe -- “Database”) refers to the place where source control files and history are stored.
In Vault Professional, “Folder” (SourceSafe -- “Project”) refers to folders in the repository.
The following menu items are no longer used:
The File / Create Shortcut
The Edit / Select
The Web / Check Hyperlinks
The Web / Create Sitemap.
Reports (In SourceSafe, these features serve the same purpose as Print commands.)
Vault Professional only supports the “visual” diff, not “SourceSafe”, not “UNIX”.
Vault Professional does not include the option to Ignore OS Differences because Vault Professional’s diff code already ignores OS differences.
The Options dialog has no pane for Command Line Options.
Check In and Check Out only function from and to the working folder.
Vault Professional does not always require files to be explicitly checked out before editing and checking in. Vault Professional may be configured to create working copies.
The Delete command does not include Destroy Permanently. This functionality is present in the Admin Web Client where it is called Obliterate.
Vault Professional does not have a built-in text editor.
There is no option to force MS-DOS compatible filenames.
The Store Only Latest Version feature is not supported. In SourceSafe, it appeared in the File Properties dialog box.
The Get Latest Version command is used to retrieve changes from the repository into the working copies, including any merge or conflict resolution. A file may not be checked in to the repository unless all changes from the server have been merged into the working copy using the Get Latest Version command.
Vault Professional makes use of a hidden state folder (named _sgvault) located in the local file system. These state folders keep track of the current version of files downloaded by the client and also store baseline versions of files for later merges. By default the state folders are kept in a user's application data folder, but a general option can be set to keep the state folders in the current working folders.
All access to the Vault Professional repository occurs through the Vault Professional server. There is no “local-mode client” to manipulate the repository through the file system.