Re: What's a good versioning system for Office documents?

[Lou Quillio <public -at- quillio -dot- com>]

Edgar D' Souza wrote:
> Andrew, thanks for pointing out that Subversion doesn't work on a
> file-locking paradigm. 

Ahem.

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.advanced.locking.html

Yet it is true that Svn, like CVS, is built on a concurrent
versioning model rather than “lock-modify-unlock”:  it's built for
collaboration.  While you may set file-level locks (as of Svn 1.2),
the system isn't designed for every checkout to be a "reserved
checkout" (locked).

Have you considered whether locking is so important?  Let's say that
 James and Kirk check-out `Manual.doc` for editing at more or less
the same time.  James, who finishes first, commits his back as part
of changeset 51.  A little later, Kirk commits his back in changeset
52.  It obviously doesn't contain James's changes.

Tiberius notices that this has happened -- there are only five
people in the group -- and it's trivial for him to check-out both
versions 51 and 52, merge them *in MS Word* (applying some necessary
judgment), and commit back version 53.

Let's think about Tiberius.  Doesn't he represent a necessary role
in any case?  Mustn't somebody be in charge?  Seems as though it's
hoped that file-locking can replace all need for communication.  But
can it?  Is that even wise?

It may be that you're needing something more like enterprise content
management.  Maybe John P. can get you a discount on Documentum, or
perhaps you're willing to enter SharePoint hell.  If not, take a
look at Alfresco:

  http://www.alfresco.com/

The feature tour might be a good place to start, particularly the
"Auditable Content" and "Workflow" sections:

  http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/tour/

You'll still need best practices, but it seems that Alfresco (which
I've only tested, not lived with) provides a means for embedding
them.  It's platform neutral and potentially free to use, if you can
live with community support (forum, Wiki) and don't need purchased
support.

LQ
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