We have a core document, say, a series of standards, that, based on that, we cre

Question

We have a core document, say, a series of standards, that, based on that, we create solution guides, promotional materials, or other supporting documents. The idea is that every time you change that core document, you have a way to trigger or flag all the downstream documents for checking to see if they have to be updated or are fine as-is. It's not always a direct citation of a particular standard, but something as general as "because we have standard 1.3a, we wrote this explanatory document". If 1.3a changes, that explanatory document may need to change, or be removed, even.

I've been reading about document management systems, and they seem to have versioning, but I don't see this particular kind of feature out there. Are there specific terms I should be looking for in evaluating the product, or does someone out there have a workflow that they use to make this process relatively painless?

Explanation / Answer

Borland's StarTeam can do this.

If you record your documents within its version control system and mark dependencies, then an update to one can trigger a workflow that indicates dependent documents for review - including across forked developments.

The number of options for such configuration is too great to list here.

I have no connection with Borland, but have been administering a StarTeam installation for more years than I care to remember.

I've used it not only with software code files but also Office documents (DOC, XLS, VSD, PDF, XPS, etc), CAD files (DWG, DGN, etc) and more. With their interdependencies.

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