Note: This post is part of a series and you can find the rest of the parts in the series index.
Since September 2009 I have been engaged in a ALM Rangers project, namely the TFS Integration Platform. Which is:
The TFS Integration Platform is a project developed by the Team Foundation Server (TFS) product group and the Visual Studio ALM Rangers to facilitate the development of tools that integrate TFS with other systems. Currently, the scope of this project is to enable TFS to integrate with other version control and work-item/bug tracking systems, but the eventual goal of this project is to enable integration with a broader range of tools/systems (i.e. build). This platform enables the development of two major classifications of tools: tools that move data unidirectionally into TFS, and tools that synchronize data bidirectionally.
So in short it is a integration system, like BizTalk or SSIS but specially built for version control and work items. I have not said TFS there because, it can work to migrate between other source control and work item systems provided adapters exist. Adapters are the logic which allows the TFS platform to connect to a variety of technologies, and my goal has been to build two of them – one for SharePoint lists and one for SharePoint document libraries.
You may have noticed that SharePoint isn’t a version control or work item system, so why integrate? Well lots of companies do use it for ALM related items, such as the lists being used for tracking work items and the document libraries are used to store content which should be in a source control system. This is the first post in a series which will give you an idea of what is involved in building adapters, show you what to avoid and hopefully give you a few laughs at my expense.
Now I want to be clear this series will not covering usage of the platform or any of the core concepts in it. For those please see the links below in particular Willy-Peter’s blog. You do need to understand a bit about how the platform works before you attempt to build your own adapter.
As all my work was done for the ALM Rangers the source code for my adapters is included in the code which can be obtained from the CodePlex site.
To help you on your way let’s list a few links which are key for this:
- MSDN home page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/bb840033.aspx
- CodePlex Project home page: http://tfsintegration.codeplex.com
- Willy-Peter Schaub’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/willy-peter_schaub/
- MSDN Forums for the Platform: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsintegration