How do you CM an application with managed content

Question

We have a web application which contains a bunch of content that the system operator can change (e.g. news and events). Occasionally we publish new versions of the software

Answer 1

When you identify two set of files which have their own life cycle (software files on one side, "news and events" on the other, you know that:

• you can not versionned them together at the same time
• you should not put the same label

You need to save the "news and event" files separatly (either in the VCS or in a DB like Ian Jacobs suggests, or in a CMS - Content Management system), and find a way to link the tow together (an id, a timestamp, a meta-label, ...)

Do not forget you are not only talking about two different set of files in term of life cycle, but also about different set of files in term of their very natures:

Consider the terminology introduced in this SO question "Is asset management a superset of source control" by S.Lott

• software files: Infrastructure information, that is "representing the processing of the enterprise information asset". Your code is part of that asset and is managed by a VCS (Version Control System), as part of the Configuration management discipline.
• "news and events": Enterprise Information, that is data (not processing); this is often split between Content Managers and Relational Databases.

So not everything should end up in Subversion.