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Eric.NewsletterColumn()
Eric Sink, Company Founder
Last week I went to a nearby CVS drugstore to pick up
the usual necessities. You know, ibuprofen, toothpaste,
and monster truck magazines (I only read the articles).
When I stepped up to the cash register to pay, the
cashier said, "Sorry sir, CVS doesn't support transactions."
<rimshot/>
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Actually what happened is all the cashiers were busy, so
I got in line. That store has one of those corrals which
feeds multiple registers, so everybody waits in the same
queue. The corral was empty, so I was next to be served.
Just after I got into the line, a woman stepped up beside
the corral, obviously waiting for a register. I wondered
why she didn't use the corral like I did, but as the woman was
clearly in her eighties, I decided not to fuss.
And then her husband intervened, "No Betsy, we have to get
in line over there", and he pointed behind me at the entrance
to the corral.
With a vague recollection of my parents once saying something
about respecting my elders, I gestured to offer the older
couple my place in line. Betsy started to smile, but Husband
responded firmly, "No sir, we will get in line."
Betsy scowled as she walked around and stood in the
corral just behind me.
About this time, a cashier, who had just finished the tedious
process of dealing with some customer from 1985 who insisted on
writing a check, called out, "I can help the next person in line."
I began to step toward the register, but I was too slow.
With surprising speed and agility for an octegenarian, Betsy
stepped around me.
Now I am finally upset. What is this lady's problem? And what
happened to that husband who was keeping her in line?
I seethed quietly, trying to remember how silly I would look
getting into a public argument with someone who looks old
enough to have voted for Lincoln.
As I drove away, my irritation began to change, focusing less
on Betsy and aimed more at myself. What was MY problem?
Why did I get so annoyed over such a little thing?
I don't know Betsy. I don't know why she behaved oddly
that day. Maybe if I did, I would have felt differently.
For example, how would I have felt if someone had told me
that she had Alzheimers?
Here at SourceGear, we sell tools to help software teams
work together better. We put a lot of craftsmanship into
our products, and we hope you are finding them to be
effective.
But teams need more than tools. Teams are made of people.
If I could sell patience and understanding, I would.
(Especially if we could structure it as a monthly subscription
so we could get a recurring revenue stream.)
All too often, we assume the worst of people.
As we've just wrapped up that time of the year when many people
participate in traditions which emphasize goodwill and
peace, may I offer you this encouragement? Next time
someone on your team does something to irritate you,
assume the best of them.
PS. When Betsy checked out from the middle of the line,
was that a "CVS branch"?
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Jeff Clausius
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Goodbye Fortress – Hello Vault Professional Edition!
SourceGear is proud to announce that Fortress 2.0 is now Vault Professional Edition 5.1. More than just a name change, this new release is an exciting upgrade to Fortress 2.0, including defect tracking integration with Axosoft OnTime, the award winning project management and bug tracking software. Simultaneous with this change, we have renamed SourceGear Vault to SourceGear Vault Standard Edition. Best of all, we’ve dropped the price on Vault Professional (Fortress) from $599 to just $449/user!
read more…
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Paul Roub
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Veracity is officially half a product!
Wait, what's Veracity?
If you're not a regular follower of Eric's Blog, and you don't regularly check our web site for front-page updates, you might not know that we have something new in the works.
SourceGear Veracity is a new Distributed Version Control System (DVCS) with some lofty goals (the only kind worth pursuing). The "Distributed" part means that a team using Veracity is not tied to a server. Every developer has a copy (or more) of the entire source repository on their own machine. Why? Short answer: Independence and Speed. The Speed comes from your being the only one talking to your very local database. Independence comes from the ease with which you can work independently, up until the moment you decide to merge your code with someone else's.
Oh yeah - we're bringing distributed databases to the party. Your bug tracker? That's local, too. Work on the plane or out of wifi range without a single scribbled note or random text file keeping track of things. And everything merges happily together when you reconnect with the team.
Did I mention that the core product will be open-source? True. With add-ons, soon after, that will make Veracity a great tool for professional teams in need of a DVCS.
And it's truly cross-platform. We build, and use, Veracity daily across Windows, Mac and Linux systems.
read more…
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Linda Bauer, Support Manager |
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We know that SourceGear's customers often upgrade their development tools and operating systems to keep up with the new technologies, so we work hard to make sure the latest version of our products are compatible with the most recent versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server, and Windows.
Vault Standard 5.1 and Vault Professional 5.1 fully support integration with Visual Studio 2010.
If you are currently using Vault Standard 5.1 or Vault Professional (formerly called Fortress) 5.1 and are upgrading to Visual Studio 2010, first install VS 2010, then uninstall and reinstall the Vault client or run a repair install. We recommend that you upgrade to Vault Standard/Vault Pro 5.1.1. It's a free upgrade from earlier Vault 5.0.x/Fortress 2.0.x versions.
read more…
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SourceGear Support |
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What if you have a server failure, hard drive failure or SQL Server catastrophic failure? These types of hardware/system failures can damage your Vault or Fortress database.
If a database is damaged, it may not be recoverable. If it is recovered with data loss, your database may still be unusable for source control or item tracking operations.
You may believe you have a recent backup. Are you sure? Maybe the backup job ran out of disk space, or something on the network has changed and the backup isn’t occurring as scheduled.
These are all real issues that have impacted our customers in the past year.
This is a friendly reminder from your SourceGear Technical Support Team to back up your sgvault, sgmaster and (if you’re using Fortress or Vault Pro) sgdragnet databases on a regular basis to prevent downtime for your production team and possible loss of your source code and item tracking information.
Once you've established a backup routine, it's crucial that you test your backups. Every couple of months, restore your most-recent backup to a separate SQL Server - which is the situation you'll be in if you really need the backup. Make sure the backups are intact and accessible, and that you know the steps to restore a working SQL Server database.
read more…
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John O'Neill, VP of Sales
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Happy New Year from SourceGear!
I hope all your holidays were great. Here at SourceGear salesmen aren't permitted time off, so I've been wandering the halls during the slow holiday weeks, munching on Christmas cookies I found in the kitchen and getting to know all the people working in our testing labs.
Like me, many of them are fitted with ankle bracelets to prevent them from sneaking off before five, so it turns out we have a lot in common. Unlike salesmen however, these testing guys sure can stay focused during cocktail hour. I was amazed at what they've been working on.
For some time now, one of the most popular feature requests from Vault users has been the ability to version control SQL stored procedures. Turns out these testing guys have working hard with one of our partners, Red Gate Software, to find a solution.
Red Gate has now added support for SourceGear Vault 5.1 to their SQL versioning tool, SQL Source Control. This allows you to work directly in SQL Server Management Studio and connect databases to SourceGear Vault, to bring all the benefits of source control to your database within SSMS. Is that
cool or what?
read more…
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