David Boschmans' Weblog

Team System competition for DevPartner Studio

On the Team System Rocks! blog Mickey says "Compuware may be feeling a little heat...". My thoughts …

As a consultant mainly involved in .NET projects I have a pretty good overview of the value of Compuware's DevPartner Suite in the real world. Compuware has been focusing for years on the application lifecycle with productivity tools like DevPartner. With Visual Studio 2005 Team System Microsoft will definitely play a role in increasing the productivity and predictability of the Software Development Life Cycle.
What I, as a consultant and using the Microsoft platform, like in this is that both Compuware and Microsoft agree that automated tools applied to the development and testing process can greatly reduce development costs and time to market, primarily by identifying and correcting software problems as early in the development lifecycle as possible.
It's a good thing that application quality is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage, to rapidly enter new markets or at least not losing money due to poor application quality.

When comparing Visual Studio 2005 Team System (VSTS) with DevPartner Studio, including the recently launched SecurityChecker and Fault Simulator, I do see some major differences between products. The comparison listed below is far for complete and only represents my own “playing” experiences with both products. Note that I've been using CTP releases of VSTS and the final version of DevPartner 7.2 release. To have a definitive and complete review I guess we'll have to wait until VSTS' "feature complete" state. Nevertheless, an overview:

• DevPartner Studio supports components analysis of distributed applications, even if those components are running on a remote machine. I haven't been able to get this up and running in VSTS, but maybe that's just me!
• Support for memory analysis is more limited with the Team System profiler than in DevPartner Studio.
• DevPartner Studio supports the analysis of any combination of native and managed code. As the vast majority of customers are still (only) working with native/unmanaged code (VB, VC++, ASP), or are creating new components in .NET that integrate with existing native code components this looks pretty important to me. As far as I know VSTS provides limited support for C++.
• Static source code and code coverage analysis is only supported to .NET assemblies in VSTS. I blogged a more in depth review of FxCop vs DevPartner Studio here. Though newer versions of FxCop have been release, the arguments remain valid.
• The Visual Studio 2005 Team Test edition has integrated support for unit testing, load testing, web tests and test case management. DevPartner Studio has no such features.
• The Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation (sold separately) supports source control, work item tracking and has project and change management features on board. Also included is a build server with reporting and analytics facilities. The reporting of the results is far better integrated in the Visual Studio IDE than with DevPartner Studio. VS Team Foundation uses a SharePoint-based project portal to show the aggregated information which is stored in a database.
• And yes, Compuware may be feeling a little heat ... hence why Compuware already added SecurityChecker and Fault Simulator to the DevPartner offering. Currently VSTS does not include these features. It’s in this area that Compuware is strengthening its role as an advisor to developers by providing value-add information like how to improve secure coding practices and emulate real-world application errors.
  The next release of DevPartner Studio will probably support development using Visual Studio 2005 and add deliver some new and/or enhanced features like performance analysis. It will probably be available when Visual Studio 2005 becomes generally available.
• It's also worth noting that to benefit of the features listed above the developer needs Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Visual Studio 2005 Team System is a superset of the traditional Visual Studio .NET IDE, and will most likely be priced by Microsoft at an accordingly higher price point. I guess we'll just have to wait until the release of VSTS for making a price comparison between both products.

Through the VSIP program, Compuware will – just as other integrators – integrate other products like TestPartner into Visual Studio 2005 Team System to enhance the functional testing experience.
If you do care about application quality today making use of "current technology", than have a look at DevPartner or any other productivity tools like PurifyPlus, etc. If you're already using the .NET Framework 2.0, just give Team System a try and read Rob Caron’s blog and his “New Team System Stuff” series.

Conclusion:
Compuware has been a long-time partner with Microsoft and I believe they will continue to be so when Visual Studio 2005 becomes available. The DevPartner product line has a long history of adding value to the Visual Studio environment, providing useful capabilities that Microsoft does not supply. Now that Microsoft adds DevPartner-like features to VSTS, Compuware provides enhanced capabilities like mentioned above. In my opinion both Microsoft and Compuware are helping each other by promoting the benefits of supporting the overall application lifecycle. The raised awareness of application lifecycle tools will result in increased business, not only for Microsoft but also for Compuware.
And what’s in for the developer? Well, I guess he will benefit from the wider availability of these productivity tools and process guidance, to raise the application quality. These tools will support the developer and help him in reducing the development costs and time to market.

All the above only expresses my personal experience and includes no official statement or opinions neither from Compuware or Microsoft!