How are build logs transferred to TFS?

Question

How are build logs transferred to TFS? Is it through web service or other means?

Also, how frequent is the transfer? Is it all in one bulk?

Answer 1

I don't have means to test at the moment, but an educated guess says that it is instant and via the App Tier's web service. How else could Visual Studio give you detailed feed back of a build whilst it's running.

Answer 2

Builds in TFS2010 are workflows. I believe that the moment-by-moment information is sent to TFS through the Workflow Tracking mechanism built into Windows Workflow Foundation.

Answer 3

You can access the build log through VS2010 or VS2012 if you want to review it, just query the build that you are interested in. If you want to access the build log programmatically, the entire build log can be found in the Tfs_YourTeamProjectCollection database in the Tbl_BuildInformation . The Tbl_BuildInformation table contains self referencing entries to preserve the build log hierarchy, and all the build information is saved in XML.

If you are interested in going down that route, I go into a little more detail in my blog . It is a bit much to post here.