RedAsh's Blog

Today Angie called me at my handphone but due to technical fault I cannot answer her call. She called me again on the evening and informed me that SCS is interested to deploy me in the new SOE project SCS had recently successfully bidded. The new position is call "Technical Specialist". LOL Sounds like a pay raise. Anyway, I intend to sign up with the Police Force, more specifically, CPIB (Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau). Then maybe from there I shall make my advances to the financial industry with this unique background of mine =D Hmmm, lets see, I got a ISO 9000:2000 cert, and a CAT 2A clearance already... so this CPIB will be something nice under my belt. Anyway, the good thing is that it only requires a 2 years contract!

Anyway learn something from my past once again. VSS (Visual SourceSafe or Volume Shadowcopy Service) and CVS (Concurrent Versioning System), and with CVS, there is usually a SMB (Server Message Block).

VSS is a typically library system that tracks several copies of a file with each version change. That is, a version recording software. The activity involved is quite similar to ShadowCopy, except it is at a file level, whereas the latter is at the volume level.

CVS is similar to VSS except it is a server-client architecture, while VSS is merely local. CVS, as far as I remember is used in conjunction with SMB, which is used to regulate the authenticated access of shared files over the network. CVS is a shared system where multiple users can update the file concurrently. Being client-server, CVS is has 2 parts of software, 1 server 1 client. Interestingly, the server has to be a Unix base server, while CVS can operate on any system.

One thing I find inspiring about CVS is its manner of controlling concurrency. Each user has their own copy but each update to the main copy in the server will result in update to all copies. Hence, the update will always be relevant. There are lots of matching operation going on in the scripts.