historical information via the node id

Let's say that we have a node numbered 73. Of course, we usually refer to it
with a node revision id, such as 73.4. However, what can we do with *just*
the 73?

What I'm thinking of is some kind of a query function that can give me all
the nodes with the prefix "73.". With those node revision ids (and branches
and whatever), I can then report on a complete change log for the given
node. This would effectively correspond to CVS's "cvs log" command which
returns *all* the changes on *all* the branches.

And yes, I do realize that the nodes have no correspondence to paths. Node
revision 73.4 could be "foo.c" while 73.5 is "bar.c.in". I'm not sure that
is relevant at this point, although I could see wanting to do a reverse
lookup that says "at what point(s) in the tree did 73.5 show up?"

I'm asking about what we can do with this because DeltaV has a concept
called a "version history" which corresponds directly to our "73". It is
used as a logical entity for defining various semantics, and it also happens
to contain a buncha buncha information that can be queried in different
ways. Presuming that I *can* map the version history concept onto 73, then
we'll be golden.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/