Industrial-strength database documentation using Extended Properties

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Industrial-strength database documentation using Extended Properties

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Adam Aspin

Posted Tuesday, April 05, 2011 12:01 AM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Industrial-strength database documentation using Extended Properties

Post #1088449

Charles Kincaid

Posted Tuesday, April 05, 2011 9:02 AM

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Great article and series.

I am curious though. You use "Description" and SSMS for columns uses "MS_Description". Is that because you are intending the article to be a teaching tool and want to avoid stepping on things?

ATB

Charles Kincaid

Post #1088675

Adam Aspin

Posted Tuesday, April 05, 2011 9:12 AM

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Hi Charles,
I am using "Description" for a couple of reasons - firstly to show that you can classify metadata comments by your own categorisation types (I have used DataLineage, ToolTip as well) and secondly because I have noticed that views in SSMS use the MS_ prefix - and this way I can avoid MS-based data when outputting.
I don't know if this is good or bad, approved or not - but it seems to work!

Thanks for the feedback!

Adam

Post #1088690

Vedran Kesegic

Posted Tuesday, April 05, 2011 9:29 AM

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XDetails plugin uses MS_Description, as it is standard in SSMS.

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

Post #1088711

Wingenious

Posted Tuesday, April 05, 2011 12:36 PM

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This free tool uses MS_Description as well...

http://www.DBGizmo.net

Post #1088835

SQLRNNR

Posted Tuesday, April 05, 2011 10:21 PM

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Thanks for the article. Great content.

Jason AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
I have given a name to my pain...
MCM SQL Server 2008

SQL RNNR

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Post #1089010

fahey.jonathan

Posted Sunday, April 10, 2011 12:27 PM

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Thanks for the great series of articles. I started using the extended properties when I got a tool that would create database documentation based on those properties.

I found that I had many columns with the same name and were really the same item in various tables. For example, many tables had the "AccountID" column, and all were copies of the same thing (primary key in the Account table, foreign key in all other tables). When writing the statement that creates the sp_addextendedproperty, I found it helpful to try to locate another field with the same name and use that as the default value. That allowed me to save a lot of retyping. Of course, I had to review each generated statement for accuracy and make changes as necessary, but it was better than having to look up what I created for the previous tables and retype or copy/paste every time. For my defaults, I used the most-frequently-used description for columns with the same name.

Again, thanks for the thorough explanation and the helpful examples.

Post #1091184

Adam Aspin

Posted Sunday, April 10, 2011 12:52 PM

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Hi Jonsathan,
You have good ideas there - cross-referencing columns with the same name and reusing repeatable descriptions. Thanks for sharing that.
Adam

Post #1091185

SSIS Guy

Posted Monday, May 02, 2011 11:49 AM

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Here is one more Free Tool to document Sql Server

Post #1101809

xyzmel

Posted Monday, May 16, 2011 12:02 PM

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Very informative series of articles. What would be helpful to me would be the ability to combine results from more than one database. We typically have a pair of databases for an application (data and code), and we have quite a few pairs. It would be nice if there could be a single instance of each stored procedure that could be executed against any database. Is there a way to do that?

Post #1109685

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