Archiving versions and configurations in a database system for system engineering environments

The amount of data arising in hard- and software development systems has a tendency to grow from large to tremendous. One reason for this is the long period of time during which systems must maintain data produced by version and configuration mechanisms. Supporting such modelling concepts by a non-standard database system requires new data models and techniques for data management. One enhancement of such a database system is an archive component which can manage data less frequently used. The aim of this paper is to state the requirements for an archiving component of a database system designed for system development and to suggest one possible model. Great emphasis is placed on the question of how archiving can support version and configuration mechanisms in an intelligent manner. (AGD