Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg
From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Re: Source Code Control
Keywords: temporal databases versions
Message-ID: <1043@aber-cs.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 89 14:38:50 GMT
Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth
	(Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal)
Lines: 30

In article <9630005@hpirs.HP.COM> runyan@hpirs.HP.COM (Mark Runyan) writes:
    >/ campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) /  8:27 pm  Jun 24, 1989 /
    >I'm not too familiar with SCCS, but with RCS it seems that you could
    >use the "state" field to identify product versions.  ...
    
    The problem of using the "state" field or even the symbolic name field to
    identify a product's versions is there is no recording of changes to the
    state field or symbolic name field of an RCS file.  An external logging
    mechinism should probably be used to record that version A was in state X1
    at Time T1, but was set to state X2 at Time T2.

This is ok of course.

But IMNHO this whole discussion is obviously vitiated by the usual
unfamiliarity of sw eng types with other fields of compsci. In particular sw
eng requires a lot of database technology, and database research also
embodies a lot of sw eng (e.g. data dictionaries, etc...), but I have seen
very few sw eng people realize that they ought to know about database
research.

Case in point: temporal databases. I always had this feeling that versioning
has been studied a lot by temporal database researchers, and it does not
apply just to databases of sw components.

It's depressing to see sw eng research groping in the dark because of a
dilettante approach to databases :-(.
-- 
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk