Do annotate fields in the database
It is, at least in MSSqlserver, possible to annotate fields. Please do.
There are people coming after you to maintain the code base. One day it might be you who come after someone. Start paying it forward.
The field explanation might be in the Documentation but the Documentation is too often faulty, not accessible and almost always not up to date. The database is closer and probably easer to keep in sync with reality.
Don’t think a field name is self explanatory. The field CustomerID in table Customer might be. But the same field in Region is not. Is it the region master or the primary customer or what? By the time the field was created the meaning of this field was clear but not a year afterwards.
The reason I write this is that I presently work in a project where the habile predecessor has written down the meaning of the fields and saved me lots of time and lots more of confidence of what the figures mean and tons of debugging time.
Tags: database, documentation, sqlserver