StarTeam 2005

Let me see if I can get your attention....

• A new SDK built natively in .NET.
• A new client built natively in .NET.
• Hot backups, so no more downtime.
• Vaults can span disk volumes, and you can have multiple vaults
• Archive and restore projects (and, as a consequence, move projects between servers).
• Files no longer stored as deltas, which trades space for a huge speed boost, and....
• Automatically chooses the best compression method, and....
• Files in the vault are identified by MD5 hash, so the same file checked into two different projects will only be in the vault once as long as the hash matches.
• MPX cache servers, which extend the MPX architecture to include files rather than just metadata. This will be a huge win for our remote sites, especially Salzburg. (When we get the MPX addon, that is.) The system is smart enough to find the "closest" cache server that's up and running, making it work even for less-stable connections.
• A new bulk checkout utility that takes advantage of new streaming techniques and the cache servers to increase check out speed by as much as an order of magnitude.
• It used to be there was a 4GB limit per archive file (tip and all revisions for a given file). This was awful for people who had media assets. The new vault structure has a limit somewhere in the petabyte (2^50) range.
• Penalties for deep reference trees are gone.
• Session timeouts are gone for users with fixed licenses.
• No more client activation keys. You license is managed by the server.
• The upgrade to version 2005 can be done piecemeal. The upgrade can occur in the background (at a performance penalty, of course) or on demand.

The quote from the development team when their own server was upgraded to ST 2005 was, "Did we buy a new server for that? No??" Look for it in November.