Customer Rating: 
Summary: Small Operations
Comment: As a CM on a project using Visual SourceSafe I speak wth first hand knowledge when I tell you it is very limited. For a small project it is sufficient as long as your manager doesn't start asking for multiple labels, all types of history queries, multiple views, et cetera. Otherwise you will be spending all your time writing scripts to fill in the holes this product leaves. The other annoying problem is documentation. Not only did Microsoft force you to print all the help, very few other publishers have put anything out on it. "Real World Software Configuration Management" and a couple others have been helpful, but I put together my own manual and tools from some good info at some Forums.
Look hard at RCS or ClearCase before buying this one. We had SourceSafe inhouse so they wanted to use it. I point out the limitations, but I will say it is fairly easy to use and with no more than 4 GB database. It runs relatively error free and is easy to fix with Analyze if you run into problems. Pricewise it is decent, but it lacks the features and support you may find your project wanting. If you have a small database, don't mind writing some scripts, and want to keep cost down, then this may suit your needs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Actually, it's a pretty darn good software program.
Comment: (...) Microsoft does in fact use VSS in-house for their production. I know this, because I worked there.
VSS is an excellent program to use as long as you have the staff (which any decent IT department should have) with the know-how to use it. We didn't have any problems incorporating it into part of our daily routine, and we used it to produce the entire Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit, both online and print versions. We also used it for Windows 2000 Help, and we used it for the Windows 2000 Professional Resource Kit as well.
Since moving on from Microsoft, I've found other such production tools to be clunky, and I heartily recommend VSS. Obviously you need someone in your IT department to have the know-how to implement it, but that's the same with *any* such software program. The time and money you save by eliminating human error in the writing and editing process for any style of development is huge, and VSS is absolutely indispensable for professional-level development of product. Once you get everyone accustomed to using it, it becomes second nature and a seamless part of the normal production process.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Buggy, Unreliable, Frustrating, Scary
Comment: Source Code Management, no doubt, is a vital part of any development shop. Any team based development effort needs a centralized repository in which to store their work.That being said, I would implore you to choose another product - such as the open source CVS (which can hook into VS.net with the right plug-ins).
VSS is a buggy, unreliable, unbearably slow...and fundamentally unuseable product. This is *not* the sort of system you should use hold vital data that ammounts to months and months of hard work.
For your sanity and your time, DO NOT buy this product. As each version seems to bring very little in the way of rethinking this disaster, Microsoft has made it very clear that they could care less about source control.
(by the way, MS doesn't even use this product in-house).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Lackluster tool: Consistent with Microsoft overall design.
Comment: If all you ever want of your revison-control software is ``check-in'' and ``get latest version'', then perhaps this is the tool for you.If you want to have branching for separate development paths, tools for merging contributions from separate sources, and abilities to affix attributes and labels in non-trivial ways then you are out of luck. To get these features, try ClearCase by Rational Software.
There is no comparison with the config-spec methadology of ClearCase, which allows one to specify exactly which file/directory elements are assembled into your ``view''.
If Microsoft truely believed in their product Visual SourceSafe, then wouldn't they use it themselves? No. They use ClearCase.
QED.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Decent, but no more
Comment: Source control is critical, and for small scale operations this app works great. Occasionally there's some db corruption, but in general you should do alright. But it really doesn't scale, lacks many features, and hasn't had any significant feature additions, or development effort in years. Sometimes I think there are no developers currently working on this app at all. There's got to be a better way.
