of materials project timeline tracking and other functions as may be defined by the business logic the clearinghouse database 112 may contain indexes of the various shared files or information contained in first company 39 s database 106 and second company 39 s database 118 as a file or other forms of information are ready to be shared in first company 120 the file or information may be published or released to the clearinghouse database 112 this process may involve identifying the file and providing searchable information concerning the file to the clearinghouse server 110 the clearinghouse server 110 may add this information to the database 1112 the business rules within the clearinghouse server 110 may define which users within first company 120 and second company 122 have the proper permissions and types of access to the file or information one set of business rules may define the overall interactions between the companies for example if the two companies are each using a different cad system one overall business rule may define the type of translation that may be applied to cad files that are transferred in another example the overall business rules may define the specific protocol that may be used to communicate between each company each file or piece of information may have business rules that are specifically applied to that file or piece of information for example a certain file may have the attributes of a draft version draft versions of files may be specially marked or annotated so that they are not relied upon for work that is done by others such markings or annotations may be applied by the clearinghouse server 110 when that file is transferred from one company to another the communication between the various.