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Posted to users@subversion.apache.org by Dirk <su...@nogga.de> on 2007/06/25 21:31:45 UTC
subversion as a document management system
Hello,
we are using subversion as a version control system for our software
development. The tool does a great job for this. Now we looked into
using the same ideas for document control, but had some problems
applying the underlying methods for documents. The problems are, that
documents in most cases stand for themself and primarily have the status
"Draft" or "Released". I most cases the last released version of the
document also replaces all previous releases, and some documents needs
to be reviewd by others before the can be releases. So there is some
workflow behind the document. Subversion is not the tool to enforce a
workflow, but could be a good solution to save the documents hierarchy.
Tools, that I found and that are not based on subversion in my personal
order of interest:
* DocuPortal.Net (http://docuportal.de)
* xinco DMS (http://www.xinco.org/index.php)
* Office Manager (http://www.krekeler.de)
* DocuWare AG
Nevertheless, I have not found any solution, that extends subversion
into this area. Is there anybody out there using subversion as a DMS
solution?
Best regards
Dirk
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Dirk <su...@nogga.de>.
Andy Levy schrieb:
>
> I'm using SVN for managing documents related to a project I'm involved
> with. It's been rough going, but we do have people using it and the
> auditors love that they get a full history of changes along with
> required logins for users.
I find managing documents releated to a project easier, since they
belong to the project. They have in common, that if your branch a state
of your project you also branch the state of the document.
My problem is more with standalone documents?
All your other points are valid as well. Are the a good set of hook
scripts around?
Best regards
Dirk
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Andy Levy <an...@gmail.com>.
On 6/26/07, Bill Walton <bi...@charter.net> wrote:
> Hi Dirk,
>
> On 6/25/07, Dirk <su...@nogga.de> wrote:
> > we are using subversion as a version control system for our software
> > development. The tool does a great job for this. Now we looked into
> > using the same ideas for document control, but had some problems
> > applying the underlying methods for documents.
>
>
> According to "Pragmatic Version Control", Pragmatic Programmers is using SVN
> to manage their book authoring process. They might be willing to share
> their experiences if you contacted them.
Bill,
Please remember to use Reply to All. Your reply came directly to me.
Bear in mind that PP is probably authoring their books using TeX, so
they can handle a lot of their documents the same as source code
(diffs, merges, etc.) which is a lot easier than binary files.
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Andy Levy <an...@gmail.com>.
On 6/25/07, Dirk <su...@nogga.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we are using subversion as a version control system for our software
> development. The tool does a great job for this. Now we looked into
> using the same ideas for document control, but had some problems
> applying the underlying methods for documents. The problems are, that
> documents in most cases stand for themself and primarily have the status
> "Draft" or "Released". I most cases the last released version of the
> document also replaces all previous releases, and some documents needs
> to be reviewd by others before the can be releases. So there is some
> workflow behind the document. Subversion is not the tool to enforce a
> workflow, but could be a good solution to save the documents hierarchy.
>
> Tools, that I found and that are not based on subversion in my personal
> order of interest:
> * DocuPortal.Net (http://docuportal.de)
> * xinco DMS (http://www.xinco.org/index.php)
> * Office Manager (http://www.krekeler.de)
> * DocuWare AG
>
> Nevertheless, I have not found any solution, that extends subversion
> into this area. Is there anybody out there using subversion as a DMS
> solution?
I'm using SVN for managing documents related to a project I'm involved
with. It's been rough going, but we do have people using it and the
auditors love that they get a full history of changes along with
required logins for users.
But, it's far from perfect. We're almost exclusively using .DOC and
.XLS files, so diffing isn't that great (TSVN comes with a Word diff
script, which works well enough) but we have had to enforce locking on
just about every file. People who've never been exposed to a version
control system and many of the concepts which longtime users of them
in a development capacity take for granted are hard for new,
non-technical people to wrap their heads around. I had to explain to
people several times that, when updating a document with a new version
provided by someone else who doesn't use SVN, they should *not* delete
the old file and then add the new version as a new file. And then
there was convincing everyone to actually *use* the system. One group
begged for about 2 weeks to get access...and then a month went by
between the time I set them up with access and checked out their first
WCs and when they actually started doing updates, commits, etc.
So, in short...it can be made to work, but it's really not a full DMS.
There's no workflow unless you implement one yourself with hook
scripts. There's not a large amount of metadata stored with the
documents. For non-technical people it can be tough to get up to speed
(but this may be an issue with "real" DMSs too).
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Dirk <su...@nogga.de>.
> Maybe Subversion just isn't the right platform. Have you looked at
> tailored DMS such as (to name one):
> http://www.knowledgetree.com/products/ktdmsfeatures
Thank you for the link.
That's the reason why I ask. I like the idea to have subversion as a
backend and beeing able to see the data from different tools, e.g trac,
WebDAV. But there needs to be a good workflow around it and some
standard way to handle the data. Currently I think subversion is not the
right backend for the job.
Thanks
Dirk
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Toby Thain <to...@smartgames.ca>.
On 28-Jun-07, at 2:51 PM, Dirk wrote:
> Hello,
>
> that is exacly my problem. I (as a developer) can use subversion to
> store and version my documents. Together with tortoiseSVN it is
> also an elegant solution, that you can teach to non developers. But
> I'm missing the workflow/lifecycle behind it.
> ...
>
> So I'm looking primarily for
> * recipies, how one could structure subversion in order to fullfill
> basic DMS feautures.
> * tools that can support these recipies
Maybe Subversion just isn't the right platform. Have you looked at
tailored DMS such as (to name one):
http://www.knowledgetree.com/products/ktdmsfeatures
--Toby
>
> Best regards
> Dirk
>
>
>
> marc gonzalez-carnicer schrieb:
>> You are right. I was describing just a "kind of" DMS that somehow
>> suited my needs.
>>
>>
>> 2007/6/26, Clemens <cl...@thalesgroup.com>:
>>>
>>> Excuse me, but in my opinion this does not mean DMS. If you want
>>> real
>>> DMS the system has also to be able to maintain a document's
>>> lifecycle
>>> that normally is very different than that from e.g. sources.
>>>
>
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Dirk <su...@nogga.de>.
Hello,
that is exacly my problem. I (as a developer) can use subversion to
store and version my documents. Together with tortoiseSVN it is also an
elegant solution, that you can teach to non developers. But I'm missing
the workflow/lifecycle behind it.
How do you publish a document from a "draft" state into an "executive"
state. Naturally you can copy the file into a folder named "executive"
but still this is quite complex, since most of the documents stand for
themself. Perhaps a handfull of documents together will form a project,
but most of them are standalone. documentA at version 1.0 has nothing to
do with documentB at version 1.0. Grouping different documents into a
label folder doesn't make any sence. It feels like a multiproject setup
for documents, but with a common directory structure.
How do you revoke a document, so that anybody can follow this step easily.
I have to admit, that I don't have a real set of requirements that I
need to have fullfilled. I'm looking for solutions and simply storing
the documents into subversion is a good first step. But we more and more
have the problem that we need to distinguish between a published
versions and drafts, that we need to have access to older published
documents and that we need to see in an easy way the state of a document.
Other features like access control, full text search and easy one step
integration into the explorer are nice to have features. If you look for
example at the Xinco DMS, this kind of setup is probably the most
secure, it is also approved by the FDA, but the overhead to edit a
document is quite high.
So I'm looking primarily for
* recipies, how one could structure subversion in order to fullfill
basic DMS feautures.
* tools that can support these recipies
Best regards
Dirk
marc gonzalez-carnicer schrieb:
> You are right. I was describing just a "kind of" DMS that somehow
> suited my needs.
>
>
> 2007/6/26, Clemens <cl...@thalesgroup.com>:
>>
>> Excuse me, but in my opinion this does not mean DMS. If you want real
>> DMS the system has also to be able to maintain a document's lifecycle
>> that normally is very different than that from e.g. sources.
>>
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by marc gonzalez-carnicer <ca...@gmail.com>.
You are right. I was describing just a "kind of" DMS that somehow
suited my needs.
2007/6/26, Clemens <cl...@thalesgroup.com>:
>
> Excuse me, but in my opinion this does not mean DMS. If you want real
> DMS the system has also to be able to maintain a document's lifecycle
> that normally is very different than that from e.g. sources.
>
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by marc gonzalez-carnicer <ca...@gmail.com>.
This is a subject I am quite interested in. I have been
using subversion (and other VCSs, like bzr) to manage
my documents and web sites. I edit them mainly using
docbook, and now I am gradually using more and more
with restructuredText. They are both a good front-end
to html or latex (docbook).
The problems I find are 2 :
* differences with indentation do not necessarily
mean a difference within the document. It is
important to enforce some indentation style
to help reduce the unwanted diffs.
* it is not a user friendly system, specially for non-tech
users
But besides that, I am quite satisfied with
svn as a DMS.
2007/6/25, Dirk <su...@nogga.de>:
> Hello,
>
> we are using subversion as a version control system for our software
> development. The tool does a great job for this. Now we looked into
> using the same ideas for document control, but had some problems
> applying the underlying methods for documents. The problems are, that
> documents in most cases stand for themself and primarily have the status
> "Draft" or "Released". I most cases the last released version of the
> document also replaces all previous releases, and some documents needs
> to be reviewd by others before the can be releases. So there is some
> workflow behind the document. Subversion is not the tool to enforce a
> workflow, but could be a good solution to save the documents hierarchy.
>
> Tools, that I found and that are not based on subversion in my personal
> order of interest:
> * DocuPortal.Net (http://docuportal.de)
> * xinco DMS (http://www.xinco.org/index.php)
> * Office Manager (http://www.krekeler.de)
> * DocuWare AG
>
> Nevertheless, I have not found any solution, that extends subversion
> into this area. Is there anybody out there using subversion as a DMS
> solution?
>
> Best regards
> Dirk
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org
>
>
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Re: subversion as a document management system
Posted by Michael Wechner <mi...@wyona.com>.
Dirk wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we are using subversion as a version control system for our software
> development. The tool does a great job for this. Now we looked into
> using the same ideas for document control, but had some problems
> applying the underlying methods for documents. The problems are, that
> documents in most cases stand for themself and primarily have the status
> "Draft" or "Released". I most cases the last released version of the
> document also replaces all previous releases, and some documents needs
> to be reviewd by others before the can be releases. So there is some
> workflow behind the document. Subversion is not the tool to enforce a
> workflow, but could be a good solution to save the documents hierarchy.
>
> Tools, that I found and that are not based on subversion in my personal
> order of interest:
> * DocuPortal.Net (http://docuportal.de)
> * xinco DMS (http://www.xinco.org/index.php)
> * Office Manager (http://www.krekeler.de)
> * DocuWare AG
>
> Nevertheless, I have not found any solution, that extends subversion
> into this area. Is there anybody out there using subversion as a DMS
> solution?
You might want to consider
http://code.google.com/p/gvn/
or for instance we are developing Yanel (http://yanel.wyona.org) which
is able to use SVN as data repository
and has workflow implemented, but one needs to set the workflow through
its webinterface or through Yulup (http://www.yulup.org)
HTH
Michael
>
> Best regards
> Dirk
>
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>
>
--
Michael Wechner
Wyona - Open Source Content Management - Yanel, Yulup
http://www.wyona.com
michael.wechner@wyona.com, michi@apache.org
+41 44 272 91 61
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