Proofing and Publishing Pattern??

Dear Group, I am looking for a software design pattern that will help
me architect a proofing and publishing system for a scheduling
application. We have two versions of a schedule that must be
persisted. One is work in progress and the other is production. How
do I achieve this with one database? It has been suggested that the
work-in-progress schedule could be persisted with xml serialization.
Another suggestion is to have duplicate entries in the database with a
status column. Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Cindy