Professional Team Foundation Server

1.2. Team System Overview

Team Foundation Server plays a very important part in Team System. It is the collaborative suite that supports the entire software development life cycle (SDLC). Prior versions of Visual Studio supported developers only and everyone else had to rely on third-party products to achieve any kind of integration. The different tiers of Team System can be further broken down into its client and server components.

NOTE

Brian Harry has posted on his blog a Visio diagram outlining how Team System was deployed within Microsoft. Specifically, it maps out the overall topology of both server and components. You can download the Visio file at the following link: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2006/08/22/712746.aspx.

1.2.1. Client Components

Here is a listing of Team System's core client components. You can't really talk about a server without discussing how the clients interact with the server (of course). Along with these clients, the Team Foundation Server API (also known as the Team Foundation Core Services) contains methods that allow you to programmatically connect to Team Foundation Server (and create your own custom clients).

• Visual Studio 2005 Team Editions—Even though this is a book on Team Foundation Server, we would be remiss not to cover client features and how they integrate with Team Foundation Server. Refer to the individual editions below for details on the coverage level.

  • For software architects—Unfortunately, this book has little to no coverage ...