Version Control System

Project Aims

Motivation

In many aspects of work, it is necessary to create and maintain documents. Whether it be a report, or a software project worked on by one person or an entire organisation. In all of these cases, it is important to successfully manage document changes. Keeping track of changes, versions and who is working on what is of key concern to many businesses.

This is where Version Control Systems come in. Version Control Systems (VCS) allow businesses, developers and individuals to keep track of changes to their files. Most VCSs will keep track of changes, with some allowing them to be rolled back, some come with desktop applications whereas others use a website interface. Each VCS has a different set of features and do things differently. However, they all have one thing in common - they are platform specific. This means that they only work with certain set ups - i.e. specific operating systems.

Some VCSs can also be difficult to set up. A way of resolving these issues would be to use a new set of technologies called Web Services. The technologies used in Web Services make communication between programs on different platforms easy. By using open standards, Web Services can be implemented on any operating system, using any programming language.

Aims

The aim of this project is to resolve the issues mentioned above and create a prototype tool that can be implemented on many different platforms. This project will make use of Web Services and the Microsoft .NET Framework to achieve this goal. The prototype developed will have an intuative user interface as well as an easy to use API (Application Programming Interface) to enable other applications to be developed to use the service.