Electric Asturias Fractals Rare. I find that most of my clients are not documenting their databases at all and I find that pretty scary. To introduce some better practice, I would like to know what tools/process people are using. • How do you document your database? (SQL-Server) • What tool do you use?

• Documentation Storage Format for database schema/meta-data? • Word documents • Excel spreadsheet • Plain Text • Documentation process or policies? I am not talking about reverse engineering / document a existing database, but mainly on the documentation best practices while you develop your system/database. Take a look at - it is my free, command-line tool that I designed to do what you are looking for. SchemaCrawler produces a text file with all of database schema objects. This text output is designed to be both human-readable, as well as diff-able against similar output from another server. In practice, what I have found is that outputting a text file of the database schema is useful, when done as part of the build.

This way, you can check the text file into your source code control system, and have a version history of how your schema has evolved over time. SchemaCrawler is designed to automate this too, from the command-line. If it is ever written, the documentation consists of a word document. A couple of relationship diagrams will be included. Lists of the tables and a brief description of what each table holds and how it relates to other tables.

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One chapter of the documentation includes the security settings: what permissions does the 'user' that the application need? Generally, in companies I've worked for, database documentation only gets written when the customer is the one who performs audits, which tends to limit its use to financial and government customers. Disclaimer: far too many developers take the attitude that the code is the documentation, and I've been guilty of it too.

A big problem I find with documentation that is not bound closely to the code (e.g. A separate Word document, as opposed to an auto-generated schema diagram + well-named database objects) is that this documentation is guaranteed to be flat out wrong as time passes.

The reason is simple: a separate document effectively duplicates information. Without an automated way to keep it in sync with the source, it will become obsolete very quickly. Compare this to a tool that generates a schema diagram live from the database and pulls the appropriate comments from within the code.

– Aug 19 '11 at 20:24. Funny, I was wondering how other people are doing this as well.

While developing my first big database project, I found that Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 10.0.1600.22 supports database diagrams which you can export to a word document or other documentation software where you can add as much documentation detail as you want. Just expand the database you connected to on SQL Management Studio and right click on 'database diagrams' in the object explorer and select 'New Database Diagram' to generate an interactive diagram which will show all the relationships between the different tables.

You can even specify which tables you want to include in the diagrams, so that the image does not get unweildly if you are just trying to document it piece by piece. Export the image to any other editing software and comment as much as you want. I also recommend plenty of / comments/ in the script which generates your database. Generally it is a lot of work writing down what it is all for, but a good idea for the long term, such as when you or some other poor soul comes back to update your creation a couple of years later!:). I use data modeling tools because they allow me to document important information about the database other than what 'fits' in a database. Meta data like privacy/security/sensitivity concerns, stewardship, governance, etc. Reverend And The Makers The State Of Things Rarely Seen Crossword. That may go beyond what some need in documenting a database, but those things are important to the business and helping them manage their data.

Formal tools also help me in managing data that is stored in more than one database/instance/server. This has never been more true than in our packaged application world. For Documenting sql server, I highly recommend just recently released: written by Kendal Van Dyke Brief description from the link: SQL Power Doc is a collection of Windows PowerShell scripts and modules that discover, document, and diagnose SQL Server instances and their underlying Windows OS & machine configurations. SQL Power Doc works with all versions of SQL Server from SQL Server 2000 through 2012, and all versions of Windows Server and consumer Windows Operating Systems from Windows 2000 and Windows XP through Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. SQL Power Doc is also capable of documenting Windows Azure SQL Databases.

Indeed, Extended Properties (MS_Description) is the way to go. You could also take a look. It's a nice little tool that works with SQL Server extended properties and creates a MS Word document. The print-out of all column properties (with foreign key relations) works out of the box. For further descriptions on each field you have to set up extended properties of those columns in SQL Server Management Studio.

It's not free but quite affordable. If you just need to create a documentation for a 'not work in progress' DB that's more or less finished than it would be enough to use the free trial.