How to manage database object descriptions?

The object's description is a text that describes table, column, view, procedure or another object. It can contain purpose, usage definition or another information by system architect or database developers.

The professional version of the schema documenting software supports all stages of the description lifecycle when standard edition allows the user to import comments from database and edition only. There are three stages: import, modification and export.

As mentioned above the standard edition can import descriptions from database only. The professional offers three alternative sources:

• Text file with descriptions delimited by Tab or another separator.
• DTM Data Modeler project file.
• Another DTM Schema Reporter project file.

Any DTM Schema Reporter edition allows the user to modify descriptions for: tables, views, columns, procedures and functions, synonyms. However, only professional edition has export function. There are three export targets:

• Save changed or entered descriptions back to database. The program uses active connection in this case.
• SQL script. For this case the reporting tool generates a set of SQL statements that add, modify or remove descriptions for existing database objects.
• Third target is another DTM Schema Reporter project. This option is most useful for users who have a few projects for same database schema like test and production environments.

The following schema illustrates object description management lifecycle in DTM Schema Reporter