ya know come to think of it, i have something similar, don't know if it is exactly as DW, but...
I know another company here in town that are ASPheads, and they use something like that. They house all their sites, files, etc... on one central server, then they use this "program" (I know it's not DW) so that when you get the file, it is always the newest, latest greatest, updated version of the file. Unlike when someone updates the file from their computer, then ftp's it somewhere, and another person has some changes as well, and one or the other overwrites the other, well then the changes for one are lost, and that is no fun.
I gather that is the way DW does it, right?