18.0 Version Control

Designer’s version control enables you to do the following:

  • Provide simple document management by tracking revisions of your project, along with all the objects and files in that project

  • Share those revisions with other members of your team

  • Manage the history of your objects

  • Make sure that every member of your team is using the same version of your project and Designer

Designer supports the Subversion version control system. Subversion is a stable open source product that is available for no cost and is released under the Apache license. For information on Subversion, see the Apache Subversion Web page. You can also find some pertinent information about using Subversion with Designer in Section E.0, Version Control with Subversion and Identity Manager Designer, as well as Section 18.6, Version Control Best Practices.

Version control allows teams to work together across continents or just across the hallway, in groups or as a single user. The Version Control view gives you information about changes that your teammates are making in real time. The version control framework allows you to update, merge, and resolve conflicts with your teammates. If you are a single user, version control allows you to make backups, restore older versions, and have the freedom to explore project changes without risking data.

With version control, you can manage the history of your project, and you can go back to a previous revision and create tagged revisions for better release management. Anyone with permission can access these revisions. The Compare Revisions feature allows you to easily scan the history of your project, find relevant changes, and resolve project issues.

Version control functionality is available for all Identity Manager objects as well as for the contents of the Documents and Toolbox folders. Designer 3 and above supports version control for provisioning objects, but not for Analyzer. However, that functionality is planned for a future release.