Hi,
I have given here about the basic structure of SVN. I think this is very useful for the web developer

Subversion(SVN) is a free/open source version control system. It manages files and directories over time. A tree of files is placed into a central repository. The repository is much like and ordinary file server, except that it remembers every change ever made to your files and directory

Subversions provides to the users

Directory versionsing
Subversion implements a “virtual” versioned filesystem that
tracks changes to whole directory trees over time. Files and directories are versioned.

True version history
Since CVS is limited to file versioning, operations such as copies and renames—which might happen to files, but which are really changes to the contents of some containing directory—aren't supported in CVS. Additionally, in CVS you cannot replace a versioned file with some new thing of the same name without the new item inheriting the history of the old—perhaps completely unrelated—file. With Subversion, you can add, delete,
copy, and rename both files and directories. And every newly added file begins with a fresh, clean history all its own.

Atomic commits
A collection of modifications either goes into the repository completely, or not at all. This allows developers to construct and commit changes as logical chunks, and prevents problems that can occur when only a portion of a set of changes is successfully sent to the repository.

Versioned metadata
Each file and directory has a set of properties—keys and their values—associated with it. You can create and store any arbitrary key/value pairs you wish. Properties are versioned over time, just like file contents.

Choice of networklayer
Subversion has an abstracted notion of repository access, making it easy for people to implement new network mechanisms. Subversion can plug into the Apache HTTP Server as an extension module.

Consistent data handling
Subversion expresses file differences using a binary differencing algorithm, which works identically on both text (human-readable) and binary (human-unreadable) files. Both types of files are stored equally compressed in the repository, and differences are transmitted in both directions across the network.

Branching and Tagging
The cost of branching and tagging need not be proportional to the project size. Subversion creates branches and tags by simply copying the project, using a mechanism similar to a hard-link. Thus these operations take only a very small, constant amount of time.

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J. Jeyaseelan
Everything Possible