Version control is required in all four categories to some extent. In source code and document management it is clearly essential.

But, while the software is converging the user profile isn't: So the same CMS packages are being sold into quite different user communities.

Also, as the software converges, we need to consider whether the existing interfaces need to be supported and carried forward or replaced by something more generic.

For instance, source code management applications generally (generally for Windows, that is!) conform to the standards of the Source Code Control API - The SCC-API ensures that all applications can provide their own brand of functionality but still maintain a generally applicable applications program interface (or API)

And document management applications produced an interface standard, too: Document management API, often referred to as DMA.

Because of the lack of clearly-defined boundaries there can be argument about how to categorise a content entity: A technical developer would probably claim that a HTML file is source code - she'd want to use SCC-API - while an author (probably using a WYSIWYG editor and treating it like a word processor) would call it a document - he'd expect his content manager to use DMA (If he knew what it was, he would!)

So something came up that was looked upon by some as a necessary fudge and by others as a genuine advance. WebDAV is now becoming the standard interface of content management per se.

Because there are still products that don't comply to WebDAV there is Slide. On sources that don't support WebDAV, Slide provides a functional framework by which content management systems may be implemented.

Another opportunity to take a view: A jaundiced view?

Maybe.

Just when we've started to get used to the term content management and become comfortable with the concepts it encompasses someone is bound to move the goal posts. So, even before the vocabulary of content management has properly established itself there is something new: The CMS vendors are now pushing ECM. Enterprise Content Management.

ECM covers - in an integrated manner - those four key areas we looked at earlier, source code, documents, web publishing and e-business integration together with (wait for it . . .) digital asset management. Which means everything else you can save to a hard disk or onto a CD.

What really saddens me is that these ECM solutions apparently don't need any kind of business process to be put into place: Spend a lot of money on some software and then more on consultancy and it all happens. Rather, what saddens me is there are people with budgets and purchasing authority who actually believe the marketing hype.

You know what to do (don't you?) when the phone rings and the person at the other end tells you they are offering web solutions. If you want a laugh, ask whoever it is what the product actually does. (Then, if you've get any kind of answer at all from the caller, compare it to the spec for Windows Explorer)

I think what I'm trying to say here is this: Content management is hugely important. It's a hugely important process.

Sales order processing is important to lots of companies, too. But most of them wouldn't buy a sales order system if they hadn't yet decided how to sell things.

Just because web technology is new it doesn't have to be taken as a matter of faith. It works just like everything else . . .

Managing web site content
Main article 

The market:
Content Management Systems