...You could see BIMserver as an IFC database, with special extra features like model checking, versioning, project structures, merging, etc. The main advantage of this approach is the ability to query, merge and filter the BIM model and generate IFC output (i.e. files) on the fly. Thanks to its multi-user support, multiple people can work on their own part of the dataset, while the complete dataset is updated on the fly. Other users can get notifications when the model (or a part of it) is updated.