How can we have a version 0 for a component in Items Table

Question

I have been trying to analyze a issue related to error while trying to rollback a component (Details Here).

Now while trying to dig further, I was amazed to see entries in the Items table of Content Manager DB. It have two records for the same component one with latest version and another with Versionfield value as 0. Further the Modification Date of the component is also exactly same. Please refer the screen shot of the table as below:

Can someone explain in what scenario it could be possible to have a component version save in duplicate at exactly the same time stamp and also with Version field value as 0 so that I can dig further in the issue.

I am using Tridion R5.3.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Version 0 - also sometimes visible in CME URLs as tcm:1-2-3-v0 - is the editable version of an item. Each item that is currently checked-out will have a record with this version number in the database and everytime you hit Save (not Save & Close), this version will be updated.

Once you click Save & Close, a new major version will be created with the contents of the version 0.

This of course will be different when you have workflow enabled - in that case, there is still a version 0 (with the same meaning of editable version), but Save & Close will create a new minor version (x.1, x.2, etc).