I am writing an application where I have some publicly available information in a database which I want the users to be able to edit. The information is not textual like a wiki but is similar in concept because the edits bring the public information increasingly closer to the truth. The changes will affect multiple tables and the update needs to be automatically checked before affecting the public tables.

I'm working on the design and I'm wondering if there are any best practices that might help with some particular issues.

1. I want to provide undo capability.
2. I want to show the user the combined result of all their changes.
3. When the user says they're done, I need to check the underlying public data to make sure it hasn't been changed by somebody else.

My current plan is to have the user work in a set of tables setup to be a private working area. Once they're ready they can kick off a process to check everything and update the public tables. Undo can be recorded using Command pattern saving to a table.

Are there any techniques I might have missed or useful papers or patterns?

Thanks in advance!