We can use Excel to connect to a TFS server and then select a work item query. Based on the query a list of work Items shows up in excel. The data can be edited and published (saved) back to server.
I would like to know the architecture / technology that TFS excel add-in uses to save the data back to TFS.
Main question is does excel access data using which one of the following:
a web service that TFS exposes
the code in add-in using some TFS client side object model or
is it using some SQL server or SharePoint out of the box functionality to do it.
I’m pretty sure Excel is using TFS SDK libraries that are using TFS Web service in the background to achieve this.
I can tell you for sure that it’s not directly connecting to TFS database – that simply wouldn’t work every time remote connections on TFS database server are disabled. It would also require you to enter user/password for SQL Server instance it needs to connect to.
Here are couple links to get you started in the right direction.
Connect to Team Foundation Server from a Console Application – I’m not 100% sure but I guess excel is using something similar to this…