[kictanet] E-Files management Tool

[wesley kiriinya]

Ladies, Gentlemen and Geeks,

There is a tool which I think might be very useful in many organizations when it comes to file management. It's called SVN which stands for SubVersioN. Probably some people in the list may already be using it or have heard about it.

What is it?
SVN was initially created to assist software developers manage their source code files. So it is popularly used in small to large scale software development environments and software repositories. It can also be used to manage ordinary electronic files. It's comes with an easy to use Windows application called TortoiseSVN. It's also available for Linux, Unix family of operating systems, etc.

What does it do?
Have you been in a situtation where:
1. More than 1 person can access a file in a server, make changes to it and save it back, then there is a conflict between changes made by different people and that conflict has to be resolved cleanly?
2. A person makes a change to a file, saves it and overwrites the original version, then latter the person finds out that s/he needs the original?
3. You are fed up with backing up files by making copies? Not only is it tedious but also becomes disorganized as the files increase and leads to using large amounts of disk space (If a paragraph in a 100 page document is edited, and one still needs the original then a new copy of the edited document has to be saved).

SVN keeps track of document changes, including changes to folders. So what's the big deal?
SVN alerts anyone sharing a document when there is a conflict between the copy they want to save and the one that is already in the server. This conflict can arise when someone opened the same document, made changes and saved it back without the first person knowing about it. So the first person will be presented with a screen showing the changes made and s/he can merge his/her changes with what the second person did. SVN will keep track of document changes by doing a difference analysis on the documents and storing this difference only, instead of a new document. Another great feature is the ability to look at historical versions of the document. All in all SVN gives you a great way to manage your files be they document, images, etc.

Where can I find it (or where can I start)?
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Security
SVN supports SSH and SSL for secure file transfers. You can also restict access to folders and files.

Extentions
If one is building software that requires the SVN functionality to manage the software's content then it can be integrated with SVN. For example: In government you have different departments that might need to fill out certain parts of a form for an individual. A software system might assist in filling out the form e.g. getting the required fields from a database. If all these departments are working on different parts of the form at the same time and they save, the software can use SVN to merge the entire document into 1 result, and highlight to the relevant departments where a conflict in entries exist.

It might take some days to get it up and running, but the savings in terms of time, money and more importantly peace of mind are well worth it!

And yeah it's free.

B~)


      
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