Re: How to make a good documentation of a database ?

Well, yes, that's what I currently use.
The dot output is very interesting, but I guess the complete database
image will be 16 meters x 16 meters large when I have finished adding
the constraints.
I have already stopped to print it.
That's why I'd like to make something more 'paper-y' like 'The book of
my database', with lots of comments.

Or, I could insert the comments in the database itself so that autodoc
auto-documents them :-)
In fact, I have already looked a little into the tables of PostgreSQL itself
to see if I could hack it by adding a column "Comments" in the "table of
columns".
But I guess it isn't wise nor feasible, is it ?

On Thu, Nov 18, 2004 at 09:10:19AM -0600, Timothy Perrigo wrote:
> Autodoc might be useful: http://www.rbt.ca/autodoc/
>
>
> On Nov 18, 2004, at 8:31 AM, David Pradier wrote:
>
> >Hi !
> >
> >I've just inherited the responsibility of a postgresql database
> >of roughly 480 tables and 6460 columns, mainly without constraints,
> >not even foreign keys.
> >
> >I'd like to make it a little more orthodox (lots and lots of
> >constraints, yeah !!), but I need a tool to make a documentation about
> >every column, at least, as some column are really vicious (like, they
> >are a foreign key to a table which depends on the type of another
> >column...).
> >
> >The best idea I could come with to do that was to maintain an output of
> >pgdump --shema-only, versioned with cvs, annotated with a patch, itself
> >versioned with cvs.
> >Not that bright, isn't it ?
> >
> >The problem is, I don't want to use a lot of time to maintain this
> >documentation, and above all, I'd prefer not to insert the information
> >twice (read: a new constraint in the database should automagically
> >update the documentation).
> >
> >Does somebody know the right way to do this ?
> >
> >Best regards,
> >David Pradier
> >
> >--
> >dpradier(at)apartia(dot)fr - tel: 01.46.47.21.33 - fax: 01.45.20.17.98
> >
> >---------------------------(end of
> >broadcast)---------------------------
> >TIP 8: explain analyze is your friend
> >
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org

--
dpradier(at)apartia(dot)fr - tel: 01.46.47.21.33 - fax: 01.45.20.17.98