Team System Lists

I’m just playing with the lists (aka work items) provided in Team System.   There are add-ins for Excel and Project that allows you to access these lists… I started to dig to try to find out where these lists are stored – and in fact, their all in SQL 2005 on the data tier primarily in a DB called CurrituckDB (Actually, there are a bunch of databases involved – still shifting through them).  It seems to me that there is really one “list” with a WHACK of fields… different “views” of the list represent different list types.  For example, the Risk view of the list would only show you the fields that are relevant to risks.  Issues, the same – but its all coming from one place – and all really being stored in one place – making it easy to extend.

Storing data inside of SQL has its obvious benefits – but one thing that isn’t there yet is the ability to see these lists from the each project’s Sharepoint site.  You need to use VS.NET 2005 or Excel/Project with the add-in to get at this data.  Yes, you could wrap it all up in reports etc – and I’m kinda expecting a Sharepoint webpart that will display the lists as well as allow for list customization and maintenance (possibly a root management site that would allow you to modify and update templates) – not there yet though.