Microsoft SourceSafe 6.0 Technical FAQ

What Best Practices are available for Visual SourceSafe administrators?

The Visual SourceSafe Best Practices guide contains a wealth of technical best practices and tips for the most efficient design and administration of Visual SourceSafe databases. 

Will Visual SourceSafe 5.0 be able to read a Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database?

Visual SourceSafe 5.0 and 4.0a clients can read a Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database if the Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database has not been upgraded to the new database format. Initially, when you create a new Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database or upgrade from a previous version of the database, you are asked if you would like to upgrade to the new database format. Click No if you want your Visual SourceSafe 5.0 and 4.0a clients to be able to read a Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database. If your clients receive an "Incompatible database version" error message after upgrading to Visual SourceSafe 6.0, the database format might have been inadvertently upgraded. There is a command line utility named Ddupd.exe, located in the win32 directory of the Visual SourceSafe server. This utility has an -undo switch that converts the database from a 6.0 format to a 4.0a or 5.0 format. The syntax is:

ddupd.exe <path to data directory> -undo

This information is also available in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Will VSS 5.0 be able to read a VSS 6.0 database? 

How can I find out if my Visual SourceSafe database has been upgraded to the new format?

To determine if your Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database has been upgraded to the new database format, check your Visual SourceSafe data directory for a file named Crcs.dat and a subdirectory named Labels.

This information is also available in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: How Can I Find Out if My VSS Database Has Been Upgraded? 

What Microsoft products does Visual SourceSafe integrate with?

Currently, Visual SourceSafe supports integration with the following Microsoft products:

Visual Basic
Visual C++
Visual FoxPro
Visual InterDev
FrontPage
Access
Visual Modeler

This information is also available in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: What Microsoft Products Does VSS Integrate with? 

How do Visual SourceSafe and Visual InterDev integrate?

Visual InterDev uses FrontPage Server Extensions to integrate with Visual SourceSafe through OLE Automation. It is important to note that the Visual InterDev client does not need a Visual SourceSafe client for integration to work. However, the web server does need to have the Visual SourceSafe and FrontPage Server Extensions installed for the integration to work. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: Q171116
TITLE: HOWTO: Enable VSS Integration with FrontPage and Visual InterDev

ARTICLE-ID: Q166259
TITLE: INFO: Visual InterDev/Visual SourceSafe Integration Discussion

ARTICLE-ID: Q165831
TITLE: PRB: Anonymous User in NT Admin Group Breaks Source Control

This information is also available in the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: How Can I Get VSS and Visual InterDev Integration Working? 

Can I convert from my PVCS database to a Visual SourceSafe database?

A conversion utility, called PVCS_SS, is included with Visual SourceSafe. This utility converts data from a PVCS database to a Visual SourceSafe database. 

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