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As you know, we keep doing a lot of changes to a program, either to fix bugs or to enhance the functionality or for some other reason else. It is really hard to keep track of all these changes, who did the change, what changes are made and so on. And also, in the future, if you want to release the software at a certain previous version number, it would really difficult and prone to errors.
On UNIX, there are a lot of tools, such as SCCS, RCS, ClearCase and so on. However, on Windows, the tools are just coming up. PowerBuilder provides interfaces from the Library painter to the third party version control packages on Windows, such as PVCS, LBMS, MKS, ENDEVOR. At the same time PowerSoft also sells a version control system ObjectCycle. Typically, all the version control systems are file based. For example, if you have program with 10 different versions, the version control system creates one file and stores all those ten versions. If you have 100 files, VCS creates 100 physical files, irrespective of number of revisions you have made for each file. If you browser the file outside the VCS, you won't be able to read the file, However, when you Check-Out a particular revision, you can read the file.
ObjectCycle is based on Client/Server architecture and is different from all those VCS. Object Cycle manages all of your files in a RDBMS, such as SQL AnyWhere database. When managed in RDBMS, the objects get more security from the RDBMS. This is especially true when you are working under Windows 3.11 or Windows 95, where there is no concept of security at file or directory level.
ObjectCycle has three components. ObjectCycle Server and ObjectCycle Manager and SQL AnyWhere database. Server is a fully 32-bit multi-threaded and it can server to hundreds of developers and multiple projects. You can't install the Server on a Windows machine. You can install on Windows 95 or Windows NT work-station or Server.
ObjectCycle Manager is a GUI front-end that connects to the ObjectCycle Server, written using ObjectCycle Client APIs. All developers and the administrator can use this tool to connect to the ObjectCycle Server. While installing PowerBuilder Enterprise/Professional edition, there is an option to install ObjectCycle Manager also.
Server connects to the SQL AnyWhere database engine using ODBC APIs. PowerBuilder Enterprise/Professional editions are pre-configured to be able to connect to the ObjectCycle Server using the ObjectCycle client API calls (transparent to us). Other than the ObjectCycle Manager, you can also access the ObjectCycle Server from two painter in PowerBuilder, Project Painter and Library Painter.
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