I've always thought that a good asset manager should have several modes of operation. These modes would most likely be separate source modules adhering to a common interface. The two basic modes of operation would be:
- Production Mode - all assets are local and stripped of all meta data
- Development Mode - assests are stored in a database (e.g. MySQL, etc) with additional meta data. The database would be a two tier system with a local database caching a shared database. Content creators would be able to edit and update the shared database and updates automatically propegated to developer / QA systems. It should also be possible to create placeholder content. Since everything is in a database, queries can be made on the database and reports generated to analyse the state of the production.
You'd need a tool that can grab all the assests from the shared database and create the production dataset.
In my years as a developer, I've never seen anything like this, although I've only worked for a handful of companies so my view is not really representative.