Questions from prospective user

[maxh]

As part of the control systems we manufacture, our company develops industrial automation software. This software consists of PLC programs and SCADA programs. We are looking at revision control solutions that will be better than a SharePoint document library. I am wondering how configurable Vault is and if it might be able to provide a couple of oddball features.

1. A single file will often represent a complete software program in our industry. As we make modifications on site at our customer's facility, we like to encode a version number and date right in the file name. This allows us to differentiate versions when away from our server. The trouble is this also defeats the version history features because the file names are not the same when we upload back into the repository. Is it possible to have Vault recognize two files as being different versions of the same document if the file names differ? For instance, we have a standardized naming convention where the last 13 characters of the file name will include date and version information. The version control system could ignore these characters when looking at a file to determine its heritage. Is Vault that customizable?

2. Our programmers may visit several customer locations in a given week and may have many different projects active. A really helpful feature would be a weekly reminder e-mail that would let each programmer know what files he or she has checked out. This would help to ensure that files are checked back in on a regular basis. Can this be done with Vault?

Thanks for any answers.

[jclausius]

1. A single file will often represent a complete software program in our industry. As we make modifications on site at our customer's facility, we like to encode a version number and date right in the file name. This allows us to differentiate versions when away from our server. The trouble is this also defeats the version history features because the file names are not the same when we upload back into the repository. Is it possible to have Vault recognize two files as being different versions of the same document if the file names differ? For instance, we have a standardized naming convention where the last 13 characters of the file name will include date and version information. The version control system could ignore these characters when looking at a file to determine its heritage. Is Vault that customizable?

One assumption made by Vault is that every version of a file remains under the same name. A model which versions each change to a unique file name would not keep history per the same file within Vault.

2. Our programmers may visit several customer locations in a given week and may have many different projects active. A really helpful feature would be a weekly reminder e-mail that would let each programmer know what files he or she has checked out. This would help to ensure that files are checked back in on a regular basis. Can this be done with Vault?

While the Vault architecture does not have this model, user's can search a repository for checked out files to any given user. Additionally, you could write a utility which queried the Vault database for the list of open checkouts for any given repository or used the command line to get a list of all checkouts, and then sent the results out as an email.

If you have other questions regarding Vault, please feel free to post to the Support Forum, or contact the main office.

Thanks.