Chapter 2.9, Problem 2.6ARQ

Explanation of Solution

Alternatives for processing office documents:

• Teams can access the office documents such as word, excel and PowerPoint using the gold standard of desktop applications which is Microsoft office.
• As it is expensive, many teams use other alternatives like LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice.
• Both of the applications are license-free and open source products.
• These applications have few features similar to Microsoft Office but these applications are robust for what they do and are adequate for several business and student groups.

Shared content with no control:

The two ways in which the contents are shared with no control is,

• Email, and
• File Server.

Email:

Email is the first and the oldest way to share the content.

• It may be accessed easily but has many problems like there is always a risk that the user does not notice whether the email has been received and it is present in the inbox, or does not save the attachments.
• It may also happen that three users receive the same document, change the contents without discussing it with each other, and upload the modified file then different incompatible versions of the document will be present.

File Server:

The other way is the file server, which is nothing but a system that stores documents or files.

• Other team members can download files if any of the team members has the access to the file server and uploads any file on the server.
• However, even this can have the issue because of no control.
• For example, if two of the team members downloaded the same file and modified the contents without the consent each other then while uploading the file, which was uploaded first, will be overwritten by the second version.

Difference between version management and version control:

Version management	Version control
It is the process to keep a track of changes made to the documents and to provide functions and features to facilitate concurrent work.	Process takes place when there are limited collaboration tools and it sometimes directs the user activities...