Geodata through CVS or SVN...

[Sampson, David]

At the Ottawa GRASS Users Group "OGUG"
(http://cemml.carleton.ca:8080/OGUG) we're wanting to host and share
community data gathered by, well, the recreational geographer or
enthusiastic geomatics tech. Of course once the OSGEO repository is
under way there are opportunities to share.

I want to find out different ways people have made collaborative
workflows for growing data sets.

I am not a programer but have been exposed to CVS and SVN (my preference
right now) for managing source code. Many data types are binary (eg
SHP). SVN can deal with Binary but I was thinking something a little
more open like GML. Also since GML is just XML text then it can be
treated like source code (theory)

Then I see some scenarios.

1. Someone can access SVN directory to get latest version.
2. Someone can access the file, add/edit it and then upload a new
version. This assumes people won't mess it all up, but we're a small
community.
3. Someone can acess the file, add new data to a new GML file, upload
the new GML and a script will append the new GML to the old GML for a
new version (I'm not a sys or server admin).

I'm interested in what else has been tried or thought of instead of
passing around a bunch of files.  I thought maybe an application
througha website to a postgis DB, but that's too much for our group to
dedicate time to.

So how can we think of geodata as source code?  What am I missing in my
thinking?

I guess a GML validation might be good.

How would this system might work for a binary?

Any ideas?

Cheers


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