Hi Kevin,

>Howe does SourceSafe, or for that matter any source control provider, store the items put under
>source control?

That really depends on the source control system. VSS uses files in a folder. For each file in the database, there're two physical files. One is the latest version, the other one in a proprietary binary format contains properties and all differences.

CVS uses a single file for each file in a standardized diff format. VAULT uses a SQL server database with differences stored in binary fields. Subversion can be configured to use different databases for storing the repository.

What all systems have in common is that they store a maximum of one version and differences for all others.