Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is an integrated Application Life Cycle Management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance to help all members of a development team improve their skills and work effectively together.
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From a product perspective, Visual Studio Team System consists of a server and a suite of client product editions:
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server – is the collaboration server at the hub of the system, which enables everyone on your team to work more effectively and deliver better quality software. It combines project management, work item tracking, version control, reporting & business intelligence, build management, and process guidance into a unified team server. Team Foundation Server includes integration with the Microsoft Office system (Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project), which provides access for business analysts and project managers using familiar applications. In addition, Team Foundation Server includes Web access to project resources and functionality.
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite – provides multi-disciplined team members with an integrated set of tools for architecture, design, development, database development and testing of applications. Team members can continuously collaborate and utilize a complete set of tools and guidance at every step of the application life cycle. Team Suite includes all of the functionality found in:
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition – focuses on improving the design and validation of distributed systems. It gives architects, operations managers, and developers the ability to visually construct service-oriented solutions and validate them against their operational environments prior to deployment.
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition – provides developers with an advanced set of tools to identify inefficient, insecure, or poor-quality code, specify coding best practices, and automate software unit testing. These tools help team members write better-quality code, reduce security-related issues, and avoid bugs later in the development life cycle.
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition – provides advanced tools for database change management and testing and offers functionality to enable database developers and administrators to be more productive and increase application quality in the database tier.
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Edition – provides a comprehensive suite of testing tools for Web applications and services that are integrated into the Visual Studio environment. These testing tools enable testers to author, execute, and manage tests and related work items—all from within Visual Studio. In addition, Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Load Agent generates additional test loads for Web application load testing.
Team System is an extensible platform that provides for customization and enables integration with third-party tools. The Visual Studio Industry Partner Program includes over 200 partners offering more than 400 supplemental products to support a broad range of software processes, tools (including Java environments such as Eclipse), and platforms (such as UNIX and Mac OS).
Visual Studio and the Microsoft Application Platform
The Microsoft Application Platform is a portfolio of technology capabilities, core products, and best practice guidance focused on helping IT and development departments partner with the business to maximize opportunity.
As one of the core products of the Microsoft Application Platform, Visual Studio can help you drive the right business efficiencies, customer connections, and value-added services by providing a single, fully integrated development environment for all types of development, including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Web, and mobile applications. Use Visual Studio development solutions to give your development team powerful ways to:
- Increase productivity and quality through integrated and familiar tools.
- Deploy, secure, and support your critical Web applications and infrastructure.
- Reduce costs through better visibility of your development process.
- Provide better predictability and planning through integrated process and methodology support.