Using the Web for document versioning: an implementation report for DeltaV

The current suite of systems that offer client/server capabilities for document versioning relies on proprietary protocols for communicating between a central versioning repository and a remote client. In order to support better document authoring via the Web, the DeltaV working group of the WebDAV (WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning) project of the Internet Engineering Task Force is working on a standard protocol for versioning over HTTP. The authors present a prototype of DeltaV based on the 04.5 draft. This system demonstrates that, though important aspects of the protocol need to be revised, versioning via the Web can be a practical means of supporting remote access to a central versioning repository.