Moving open files

[Ed Greshko]

Dotan Cohen wrote:

> When a human moves a stapler from one drawer to another, he has no
> reason to suspect that any modification to the stapler (such as
> refilling it) would cause a duplicate stapler to appear in the old
> drawer. Likewise with the movement of open files. This seems to be a
> real 'gotcha' or trap that one could very easily fall into.

Your analogy is askew.....

Let's take a 3-ring binder with some document in it.  For the sake of ease, 
the document is a single page.  And we have 2 people, X and Y, and they 
never talk to each other.

X opens the binder, takes out the doc, makes a copy at the copier and puts 
the original back in the binder leaving the binder open.  X goes off to his 
desk to make some modifications.

Y comes along, removes the doc from the binder, takes it to his office and 
places it in his filing cabinet.

X is finished, goes back to the binder sees the original missing, says "what 
the heck...I was going to trash it anyway" and puts the modified document in 
the binder.

The next day X asks Y for the document.  Y goes to his filing cabinet and 
hands it to X.  X says, "hold on a minute....".

That's what they get for not talking to each other....but everyone knows, or 
should know, that X and Y don't talk.

The same holds true if X puts a note on the binder saying please don't touch 
or move this document.  Y can just ignore it.

And yes...if at some point Y goes back to the binder and finds the modified 
doc in the binder he may say..."We don't need 2 of these" and burns it then 
the modifications made by X are lost.

Knowing that the above happens is why document management systems were 
written.  But, of course, using a document management system may be overkill 
in daily, informal use.