How do you create and update database administration documentation?

1 Identify your documentation needs

Before creating or updating your database administration documentation, you must identify what kind of information needs to be documented and why. The types of documentation vary depending on your database environment, but some common ones are database design, operations, performance, security, and usage. Database design documentation helps you understand the structure, relationships, and dependencies of your data. Database operation documentation ensures availability, reliability, and efficiency of your systems. Performance documentation measures and improves the performance of your systems. Security documentation safeguards confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. Finally, usage documentation helps leverage the value and insights of your data.

2 Choose your documentation format

Once you have identified your documentation needs, you need to choose the format that best suits your documentation purpose and audience. Depending on your preferences and resources, your documentation format may vary, but some common formats include text documents, diagrams, spreadsheets, presentations, and wikis. Text documents are easy to create, update, and share. Diagrams are powerful for illustrating the structure and relationships of data. Spreadsheets are practical for organizing, analyzing, and presenting data. Presentations are engaging for communicating and explaining data. Lastly, wikis are collaborative for documenting and updating in real time. Each format has its own advantages that can be used to effectively visualize complex or dynamic data, represent data flow and processes of database systems, organize and present performance metrics, communicate operation and security policies and procedures, and document tasks and roles of the database team.

3 Follow your documentation standards

When choosing a documentation format, one needs to adhere to the standards that apply to the content and quality of the documentation. These standards can vary depending on the organization and industry, but some common ones are accuracy, consistency, completeness, conciseness, and readability. Accuracy means that the documentation should reflect the current and correct state of database systems, as well as valid and reliable data. Consistency means that the same style, format, and terminology should be used across database systems. Completeness means that all relevant and essential aspects of database systems should be covered in the documentation. Conciseness requires that documentation should be brief and precise without compromising accuracy or completeness. Readability requires that documentation should be easy to read and comprehend regardless of format or complexity. To ensure these standards are met, templates, glossaries, and references should be used.

4 Use your documentation tools

When creating or updating your database administration documentation, there are various tools and technologies available to help automate, simplify, and improve the process and product. Depending on your needs and preferences, the documentation tools may differ, but common ones include database documentation generators, editors, and viewers. Database documentation generators (e.g. dbForge Documenter, SQL Doc, SchemaSpy, and Dataedo) can save time and ensure accuracy while database documentation editors (e.g. dbForge Studio, SQL Server Management Studio, Oracle SQL Developer, and MySQL Workbench) can customize and integrate the documentation with the database. Lastly, database documentation viewers (e.g. dbForge Documenter Viewer, SQL Doc Viewer, SchemaSpy Viewer, and Dataedo Viewer) can share and review the documentation. All of these tools can help you build a comprehensive and accurate documentation system.

5 Update your documentation regularly

You should regularly update your database administration documentation to keep it current and relevant with the changes and developments of your database systems, as well as the needs and expectations of your database stakeholders. Depending on your database environment, the frequency of updates may vary. Database changes, such as schema changes or configuration changes, should be updated in the documentation after they have been tested and deployed. Additionally, if you encounter or resolve any issues or errors in your database systems, you should update the documentation to record the cause and solution. Lastly, when receiving or providing comments or suggestions from your database stakeholders, you should evaluate and implement them in the documentation to incorporate improvements and corrections.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?