Extended Properties Introduction

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Extended Properties Introduction

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Adam Aspin

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 12:01 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Extended Properties Introduction

Post #1079473

Vedran Kesegic

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:26 AM

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You can easily view column comments with free plugin called XDetails.
Here is screenshot (Description is field with column comments):

You can download it here: www.sqlxdetails.com

_____________________________________________________
XDetails Addin - for SQL Developers and DBA
blog.sqlxdetails.com - Transaction log myths - debunked!

Post #1079516

steve.casey

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 4:07 AM

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I fear the spell-checker has struck! You have "ellipse button" where you meant to say "ellipsis button"...

Post #1079538

Adam Aspin

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 4:21 AM

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Doh! Speling wil be my undiong! - Thanks Steve!

Post #1079545

P Jones

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 4:58 AM

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Getting extended properties in is easy enough especially with a bit of help from scripting. It is getting them out again in the form of meaningful documents that is the hard part.

Post #1079564

Adam Aspin

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 5:16 AM

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I quite agree - and the next article addresses this problem, in as much as I can.

Post #1079567

Jeff Moden

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 7:00 AM

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Superb article, Adam. It's loaded with info and an easy read to boot. I like your writing style a lot!

This is going into my "must read" locker for newbies. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

--Jeff Moden

"RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for "Row-By-Agonizing-Row".

First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
Stop thinking about what you want to do to a row... think, instead, of what you want to do to a column."

For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/

For better answers on performance questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/

Post #1079616

Adam Aspin

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 7:22 AM

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Thanks Jeff - praise from a leading light like yourself makes my day!
There are three more articles to come (one a week for 3 weeks) which, hopefully, will help newbies not only add, but also extract and update this metadata in a comprehensive manner.
Adam

Post #1079628

Alexander Kuznetsov

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 7:53 AM

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Adam,

Alternatively, I can just store all I want in my own table, and then I can work with sets of rows, search on any criteria I wish etc., and the next release is less likely break anything.

What would be the disadvantages of rolling my own solution, except for referential integrity?

Post #1079654

ACinKC

Posted Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:15 AM

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Nicely done; looking forward to the rest of the articles.

I created an Excel/VBA solution for my current gig that read in the metadata for the tables and columns into a workbook (one worksheet per table). We then handed that to the analysts/worksmiths to have the descriptions crafted. Once they were done, another button in the workbook parsed through all the Description columns and created or updated the Extended Properties for the objects. Turned out very simple and very little coding. Any updates to the database are easily handled by the VBA code, so maintenance is a breeze (except for the analysts/wordsmiths who have to do the actual updating in the Excel file!). It's a two-way tool, creating the Data Dictionary (in Excel) from the database and using the same tool in turn to update the EP values in the database.

Post #1079668

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