EDUML change control

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@cse.ogi.edu>]

On Thu, 6 May 1999, Bruno Vernier wrote:

> Come to think of it, the cvs model seems well suited ; perhaps the central 
> database should really be a CVS managed database formatted in EDUML: any 
> authorized teacher can modify information and there is a trace of who did what 
> and when.
My thought on that is that the cvs model (rather, the change-control
model) is perfect, but cvs itself would suck in that role.  CVS is
designed to support multi-file projects with changes that are very
localized, and structured line-for-line.  EDUML (which I know next to
nothing about, really, except that it's XML) isn't going to fit into that
model very well, simply because of the way the file (not files) is
structured.

Ideally, the file/db itself would have change-control structures.  Not
sure what form that would take, except maybe have N entries for any given
field, with timestamps on them.  That makes parsing it painful, and since
the file would grow linearly with the number of changes, all the
operations on the db would grow linearly too.  A solution would be to have
a maintenance script that strips out the old stuff into archives for
extraction later with extra work.  Keeps the main db small (grow, grow,
grow, SHRINK, grow, ...) yet keeps the change-control info.

I guess it makes a big difference how stuff is stored.  If you're making
use of the filesystem, by having one EDUML file per student or somesuch,
then it becomes a lot less of an issue, but it's still a potential
nightmare.

Dunno, perhaps there are some 'official' thoughts on change-control with
XML documents.  A quick (ok, maybe slow and drawn out, given the topic)
search of the net might yield some interesting stuff.  I can check with a
few profs at work to see if they know of anything, too.

TTYL,
    Omega

         Erik Walthinsen <omega@cse.ogi.edu> - Staff Programmer @ OGI
        Quasar project - http://www.cse.ogi.edu/DISC/projects/quasar/
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