On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 12:02:27PM -0800, Shahaf Abileah wrote: > I'm looking for a systematic way to document the schema for the database > behind our website (www.redfin.com <http://www.redfin.com/> ), so that > the developers using this database have a better idea what all the > tables and columns mean and what data to expect. Any recommendations? You can and should be using COMMENT ON for the important database objects. http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-comment.html > It would be great if the documentation could be kept as close to the > code as possible - that way we stand a chance of keeping it up to > date. If your schema is changing substantively (i.e. anything other than adding/dropping table partitions) with any frequency, that's a sign of a broken design process which you need to fix. > So, in the same way that Java docs go right there on top of the class or > method definitions, it would be great if I could attach my comments to > the table definitions. It looks like MySQL has that kind of capability: See above re: COMMENT ON :) > create table table_with_comments(a int comment 'this is > column a...'); > > (see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/create-table.html) > > However, Postgres doesn't support the "comment" keyword. Actually, it does :) > Is there an alternative? Cheers, David. -- David Fetter <david@xxxxxxxxxx> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@xxxxxxxxx Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend
