I have just started using TFS as a version control system at work.

So far I have found a few flaws:

• It does not support keyword expansion so you can automatically keep the version number in the header.This is a pain as I have a database versioning scheme that relies on this.
• The UI in Visual Studio is rather limited compared to most other VCS clients.  It is heavily geared around editing everything via Visual Studio.

I have just finished reading “Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns” by Jimmy Nilsson.

This is the closest that I have seen anyone come to the approach that I have discussed here.
One of the big differences that he aims to have a model that can be saved at any time.
The approach that I had was to have a model that could take what ever input the user gave (irrespective of the ability to save).  The problem comes when you are missing a mandatory field or if the user supplies XXX to a numeric field.

He opted to use an object relational mapper where I used code generation to create a distinct data access layer hierarchy.  He covers the context problem for business rules – but insists that they are part of the model.  My take is that the business rules do form part of the model but must be attached to the entities.

I have started using SSIS to propagate 40 reference tables from one system to another.
SSIS reminds me of Crystal Reports – it works well for the simple cases and does have tools to allow complicated options.  However the complex parts become very fragile.

For crystal reports I eventually took to putting as much of the logic as possible into a view or a sproc so that crystal only requires a simple select plus a few formatting options.  If you treat Crystal as a presentation layer you get two benefits – far less debugging plus a possibility of moving to a better option when one becomes availbale.

SSIS is similar.  I was having a lot of trouble coping with moving unicode data around.  The best solution that I could come up with was to alter the select commands to cast the data to the right type.  SSIS can perform automatic name matching if the column names only differ by case.

My transformation goes:

Select from Sybase -> Staging Table
Call Proc that updates/inserts the real table from the Staging Table.

How much is SSIS actually buying here?  A custom app could do all this and I could define the mapping in a seperate table (which I can’t do with SSIS).  In addition the error handling in SSIS is a bit of a joke.  Eventually it comes down to using the profiler if a problem is detected.

This is an alternative VCS system.It claims to be more flexible than Subversion.

This is an alternative continuous integration server.