Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Documenting your databases – one tool does it all

Documenting anything is usually a painful task that everybody talks about but no one likes to do. I have seen one client after another with virtually no database documentation and no awareness of the incredible amount of time that especially newcomers spend on understanding how the objects relate to each other, how the data is stored, and what kind of constraints they need to be aware of!

Here is a perfect excuse that I have heard way too often: “by the time we are done documenting things have already changed so the documentation becomes outdated before it is even completed”. That might have been true in the distant past but not any more. With the right tool you can document your databases like SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Informix virtually any platform, in minutes – you can even create a job that automatically updates the documentation every day. One of the best tools out there to do the job is xSQL Documenter which allows you to simultaneously generate compiled CHM and / or HTML documentation for all your databases.

What’s even better, a great tool like this does not cost a fortune – for less than $200 you will get an incredible tool that will save your organization hundreds of hours of work.

xSQL Documenter supports the following platforms: SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, Informix IDS, Sybase ASE, Sybase SQL Anywhere, PostgreSQL, Access, VistaDB, ENEA Polyhedra;

You can download your copy of xSQL Documenter from http://www.xsql.com/download/database_documenter/

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