Besides modeling, SqlDBM's rich documentation features can help your team understand the underlying architecture of your database or application. Using these features, you can quickly find relevant tables and fields and collaborate across functional domains.

To access, click on the "Database Documentation" link on the left pane.

All the tables in your project will be displayed on the left side of the screen and on the right, at the column level.

Database Documentation gives SqlDBM a way to search and maintain object properties from a single screen. These properties range from informational (e.g., data type), metadata-only (e.g., logical name), and physical/DDL-related (e.g., comments).

Depending on your license, you may have access to additional fields beyond what standard Database Documentation provides—this includes Data Governance and dbt-enabled fields. Please see the related articles at the end of this page for more info on dbt and Data Governance fields.

While dbt meta-enabled fields require a Data Governance license, standard properties

Using the search box on the left side of the screen, you can quickly locate tables and fields.

The wildcard match of the search term will look for matches in all available fields (including Data Governance fields):

Click on any search result to navigate directly to the relevant table and fields.

You can view and maintain a functional description of any table or column using the text input on the right side of the screen.

Note that any descriptions entered here will automatically be generated as DDL comments through the Forward Engineer functionality.

Logical names can also be maintained here in a similar manner. Note, that logical names are not reflected when generating DDL through Forward Engineering.

You can maintain functional descriptions offline and with team-members without a SqlDBM license using the export and upload functionality.

Export

To export database documentation, click the Excel icon at the top right of the screen.

SqlDBM will generate an XLSX document with all the information shown in the Database Documentation screen.

Edit

You and your team members can make changes to the descriptions directly in the generated Excel document.

Bear in mind that only descriptions are meant to be maintained through this mechanism. They are highlighted in yellow for your convenience. The import will not recognize any other details or metadata that is changed in the excel.

Import

If you or anyone on your team has made changes to the descriptions in the generated Excel document, you can upload them back into SqlDBM.

Click the up icon to upload the Excel document and bring the changes contained within it to SqlDBM

An expanded version of the search functionality described above can be found in the Database and Diagram Explorer screens.

Click on the "Database Explorer" or "Diagram Explorer" icons from the left pane and find the search window in the same location as in Database Documentation.

Unlike Database Documentation, these screens will display all database objects and allow you to search using the same wildcard match functionality.

The wildcard match of the search term will look for matches in:

º Table names

º Column names

º View Names

º Descriptions

º Schemas

º File Formats

º References

º Virtual References

See also:

• Foreign Keys

• Forward Engineering

• Descriptions

• Excel Import / Export

• Data Governance (and dbt) Fields