John,

>Thanks for your answer, I get it now!
>
>I've forwarded your and other answers to be implemented.

Excellent all around!

>You asked whether there are any other questions, how about this one:
>
>The rapidly aging CEO of a certain firm currently resides in the UK but maintains a development team in New Zealand. Sometimes said CEO likes to cut code or examine work underway. A rather cumbersome mechanism has been set up to control this. Is there any way for VSS to assist? At present the NZ entity has a firewalled portal to the outside and the internet/local network are also physically separated by different network cards and domains, so we can't use VSS directly by WAN. I suppose we could have files checked out by an assistant at the NZ end, but the 12 hour time difference means that wanting to work at 1pm here will be after midnight over there, people may not be at work.

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the Shadowing function in VSS. You can make a project automatically mirror out the latest version of a source-safed file to a certain directory. Now, if VSS and what-the-CEO-can-reach are two totally isolated things, I am not sure how this will help, as VSS won't be able to mirror to a spot that the CEO can get to. But if something can be arranged, you can serve up a nice view of the files for the CEO while letting VSS chug along its merry way...

Also, if VSS is forced to shadow to a place with limited bandwidth I assume it would slow down every operation in VSS as it tries to build a new file with check-ins, etc. We don't use shadows here, but we used them where I last worked. Seemed to work OK, but we never got to enough versions where the shadowing might be expected to slow down.

Just so you know, VSS is really in no way client/server, even though they say it is. It is only C/S in that the files are shared on the network and accessed via client programs. The machine housing the VSS data does not do any processing or anything other than serving up files in a normal fashion. I have heard of something called Source OffSite that works with VSS to make it more truly server-based, so that may help your CEO get to things more quickly and cleanly. But with the complete separation of networks, anything might be a bit of a kludge...

Good luck, and have a great weekend!

JoeK