SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

• US 20020049697A1
• Filed: 02/03/1999
• Published: 04/25/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 02/04/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Interwoven Incorporated (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: NAKANO, RUSSELL T., JIA, JACK S., COCHRANE, KEVIN, BARR, SANFORD L., PARK, BRITT H., HEGDE, GAJANANA, YEE, TERRENCE T.W.
• Granted Patent: US 6,505,212 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99938 Concurrency, e.g. lock management in shared database
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability

Abstract

A system and method for file management is comprised of hierarchical files systems, referred to as “areas.” There are three types of areas: work areas, staging areas, and edition areas. A work area is a modifiable file system, and, in a work area a user can create, edit, and delete files and directories. A staging area is a read-only file system that supports select versioning operations. Various users of work areas can integrate their work by submitting the contents of their work area to the staging area. In the staging area, developers can compare their work and see how their changes fit together. An edition is a read-only file system, and the contents of a staging area are virtually copied into an edition to create a frozen, read-only snapshot of the contents of the staging area. One use of the system and method for file management is as a website development tool.

Claims

1. A method for developing a website:

editing a select object in a work area;

submitting contents of the work area to a staging area;

integrating the contents of the work area with other contents submitted to the staging area;

determining whether said other contents is in conflict with the contents of the work area; and

in response to said other conflicts not being in conflict with the contents of the work area, making the contents of the staging area into an edition of a website.

2. A system for file management comprising:

a work area, the work area being a file system having read and write operations to enable a user to edit files in the work area;

a staging area, the staging area being a file system having read and versioning operations and adapted receive the contents of the work area; and

an edition area, the edition area being a file system having read operations and adapted to receive the contents of the staging area.

3. The system of claim 2, further comprising a plurality of work areas and wherein the staging area is adapted to receive and check for conflicts in contents of two or more of the plurality of work areas.

4. In a system having a plurality of file systems, a method for maintaining an identity of contents of an item in each of the file systems in which the item is included, the method comprising:

associating a history object with the item; and

for each file system in which the item is included, maintaining an entry in the history object indicating the contents associated with the item in that file system.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

in response to associating new contents with the item in one of the plurality of file systems, altering an entry in the history object corresponding to that file system to indicating that the item has the new contents; and

adding a reference in the new contents to the previous contents.

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising:

determining whether a second item is in conflict with the item by determining whether contents in the second item are previous contents of the item.