Re: documenting a database

[John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

> On Tuesday, May 15, 2007, doc woman wrote;
> 
> > I've worked on procedures, guides, manuals, etc.. now I 
> > will be documenting a database and I have to admit I haven't 
> > the foggiest idea how to get started. Any advice out there 
> > for me?
> ---
> 
> Are you talking about a database, a database management 
> system, or an application that's based on a database or 
> DBMS? If you don't know the difference and it's not the 
> latter, my honest advice would be to pass the job onto 
> someone who does because it will take you too long to
> get up to speed.
> 
> If you're documenting a database, your audience will probably
> expect to see things like an EAR model and/or a schema. They 
> might also need the business rules being modelled together with 
> the mapping between the rules and the entities, attributes,
> relationships, and constraints. You might also need to understand 

With all respect to Geoff, screw all that. Get a program made for
creating data dictionaries (that's what you are creating), run the
program, and deliver the output.

Unless you speak DBA, you aren't going to be knowledgeable enough to
know how to create a ERD (Entity relationship diagram), logical vs
physical database models, database table attributes, relationships,
etc. With a program such as Document! (and some others) give yourself
2 days to learn the program and 1 day to produce the deliverable. 

The programs are pricey, anywhere from $500 to several thousand, but
what is the cost of several weeks learning database, then spending
several more weeks to produce the deliverable.

If I recall, I've also used some shareware (not open source) programs
that do a pretty good job. One that comes to mind is Sschematodoc
http://www.schematodoc.com for about $165

Also, as long as you have the right version of Visio, you can create
some of the dictionary using Visio, at least the ERDs

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

"They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
So far, so good."
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