One of the challenging aspects of the SCM literature (common to many academic communities) is that many papers use different terms for the same concept, and the same term for slightly different concepts. Another is that there are sometimes system facilities described with sufficient rationale for why that capability is present. It's somewhat unclear as to what problem is being solved or addressed.
The goal of this assignment is to have you contribute to improvement of our understanding of the different terms and goals supported by SCM systems. This is accomplished by closely studying 3-5 systems, and then gathering information about the terminology and goals used by these systems.
The answer to this assignment has four parts:
Systems
List the names of the 3-5 systems you investigated.
Definitions
Pick three concepts, where each concept is found in at least two of the systems you're investigating. Then, for relevant systems, give the term for that concept, as used by the system, noting variations among systems. Then, give a definition for the concept. Finally, give at least one direction quotation from the original paper, showing how the term is being used (with appropriate citation, including page number).
For example, for the concept of a revision, you will find some systems calling it a "version" and others a "revision" (and sometimes both in the same article). You would then give your definition of a revision ("a persistently stored important state in the evolution of a file") . Finally, find some direct quotations where the term is used ("The Version Management Common Service provides basic facilities for the management of versions of single objects and groups of linked objects." [1], p. 14.
Goals
Pick four functionalities provided by one or more of the systems you are examining. For each functionality, describe the functionality, and then describe what goal this functionality meets. That is, each capability provided by an SCM system is there to satisfy some requirement or goal. You need to reverse-engineer the goals for the chosen capabilities. In some cases, the papers describing the system will give rationale for the facility. In other cases, you will need to make an educated guess as to what goal is being satisfied. Sometimes there will be multiple goals listed for a given capability.
In cases where you are unsure, list all the possibilities you think are reasonable, and your pick as to the one which is most likely (and why). Support your analysis with quotations (appropriately cited) from the source materials.
Bibliography
Bibliographic entries for each paper or book used in this assignment. For example:
[1] Ian Thomas, "Tool Integration in the Pact Environment," In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Software Engineering, Pittsburgh, PA, 1989, pp. 14-22.
Last modified: