Database Data Dictionary Report Generator - Idea Part 1
© copyright 29.Jul.2010 by Paul Bradley posted under DataDictionary.
In my day job I need to create data dictionary database documentation, for my fellow developers to use. Here I outline an idea I have for creating an open source product, which creates a Word file from the Microsoft SQL Server Schema.
Why open source then? - well there is product called Redgate SQL Doc which costs £244 for a single license, and for our department of eight developers the cost would be in the region of £1,319.00 (including one years upgrades). In the current economy, I feel this is quite a high ticket price, for something which would be quite easy to develop in a short period of time. I have already done the research into using the extended properties feature of SQL Server, to save things like table column comments back to the database.
So what would it look like?
I fired up my copy of balsamiq and sketched out the type of user interface I would want to use, and here is the first draft :-
Features
Here are the key features I would need :-
- Core product is open source, with perhaps additional extra features / support as a paid version. In the region of £80 per site.
- Point the tool at any existing database and generate a data dictionary with a single click.
- I like to list my data tables first in my documentation, with the reference tables following. So need an option to store an extended property within the database, which highlights if the table is either a data or reference table.
- The ability to store database / table level comments.
- The ability to store table column descriptions in the MS_Description field.
- The ability to have the report template based, so I can add corporate information, and a preamble to the report.
- To output the report as either a Word file or a HTML 5 series of web pages.
- The ability to regenerate the report via a command line, so that it can be scheduled to run via a batch job, ensuring the documentation is always upto date.
Interested?
If anyone is interested in me developing this solution for the community, then please write to me. Basically the more interest I get, the more time I will devote to producing the software.
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