Database Support for Versions and Alternatives of Large Design Files

We identify the roles played by design versions and alternatives in an engineering database. The obvious way to implement versions is to maintain each in a separate collection of files. Because several versions must be kept on line in a design environment, the approach leads to large disk requirements. We develop B-tree-based storage structures to encode versions as ``negative'' differential files. Our objective is to keep the disk requirements small. We discuss the effect of enormous amounts of cheap archival storage (write-once optical digital disks) on the proposed structures. We have implemented versions in the Wisconsin storage system (WiSS), an experimental database component developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.