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Tags: Creating a Data Dictionary
22 January 2012 - 11:33am | 
Bob
What is a Data Dictionary?
Simply put, it is a document that describes databases, tables and columns.
Maybe a better question is, why do you need a Data Dictionary?
1. At a minimum a Data Dictionary is useful to educate new employees.
2. One could argue that is a database is designed properly that you wouldn't need one. Full names with no abbreviations would be the best database design. However, with the best designs, there are still names that don't make full since.
For example, if you saw address, city state in an address table, you really wouldn't need a Data Dictionary. How about s_address, s_city, s_state, m_address, m_city, m_state for column names? Names are not too clear. A Data Dictionary would be useful.
How to maintain a Data Dictionary?
Databases and tables change all of the time to meet the changing business requirements. With that said, how do you keep the document up to date?
1. you could make it part of your release process to maintain the documentation. However, it seems that documentation is always last on everyone's list.
2. You could use the database it's self for documentation. While making a database change it is easier to maintain the Data Dictionary.
SQL Server has a somewhat crude way of adding a description to a column with a command sp_addextendedproperty. This command will add a record into a system table called sysproperties
EXEC sp_addextendedproperty
@name='<columnName>',
@value='<columnDescription>',
@level0type='user', @level0name='dbo',
@level1type='table', @level1name='<tableName>'
where @name is the column name, @level1name is user table name, and @value is the column description
Creating the Data Dictionary
attached is a sql script that will produce a list of every table and every column. It has the table name, column name, data type, constraints and defaults, and column descriptions (if using sp_addextendedproperty)
