Recording Information About an Item

A computer program product tangibly embodied in a computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for obtaining an earlier version of an item, the method comprising:

• identifying an item for which an earlier version is to be obtained, the item being subject to a data model having no predefined schema for items;
• obtaining, from a repository and using a version number associated with the earlier version, attribute information having an association with the item, wherein a time period when the association is valid is not recorded in the repository;
• and
• generating the earlier version based on the attribute information.

A computer program product tangibly embodied in a computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for recording versioning information about an item, the method comprising:

• identifying an item associated with a new version number, the item having an item identifier and being subject to a data model having no predefined schema for items;
• assigning a cycle number to the item based on an earlier cycle number associated with an earlier version of the item;
• and
• storing the cycle number and the version number in a repository, in association with the item identifier.

A computer program product tangibly embodied in a computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that when executed by a processor perform a method for identifying earlier versions of associated items, the method comprising:

• identifying a first item having a version number, wherein a past state relating to the first item and at least one associated item is to be obtained, the items being subject to a data model having no predefined schema for items;
• obtaining an identifier for the associated item;
• and
• obtaining from a repository at least one version number for the associated item valid for the version number of the first item, the repository storing version numbers for a plurality of items organized by cycle numbers.