Formatting Options?

[jfennell]

Hi,

I was wondering about the possibility of adding in some formatting options to the SQL Doc tool. Speaking as a yank, it would be nice to be able to choose the date string format used in the document, to select something other than the standard European format, to eliminate the time and just show the date, etc.

Also, it would be very useful to have some options to customize the cover page of the documentation, e.g., when generating a Word document. The ability to include an image for a company logo would be nice. Even just something as simple as being able to exclude the server name and file path (which are only specific to a particular installation of the database) would be helpful when generating the documentation against a database on development server.

The cover page can be manually updated in one place after generating the document, and the date format could be changed with a "find-and-replace" on the document. It would be much easier to be able to specify those options before generating the document than to have to edit the document every time it's generated.

Thanks for your consideration.
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~ Jim Fennell

[Sian.Williams]

Thanks for contacting Red Gate.

You can try a few things to do what you're asking - have a look at these articles and let me know if they help at all?

Customizing SQL Doc - http://www.red-gate.com/supportcenter/Content?c=SQL_Doc%5chelp%5c2.0%5csd_customzing_documentation.htm&p=SQL%20Doc

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/sql-tools/database-documentation-using-sql-doc/

Customizing the cover page - http://blog.benhall.me.uk/2008/12/sql-doc-20-customizing-word-cover-page.html
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Siân Williams
Red Gate Software
Tel: 0800 169 7433
sian.williams@red-gate.com
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[jfennell]

Thanks Siân,

The article on customizing the cover page is excellent for my current project as we are generating the documenting in a Word document (then converting to PDF). I'll have to take a look at the files in that "style" directory to see what can be done with customization. If I create my doc in HTML in the future, I'll be sure to look at the style sheets mentioned in the other links.

Thanks again for the information and for a great tool!!

~ Jim Fennell
_________________
~ Jim Fennell

[jfennell]

Siân,

I'd like to expand what I can do in customizing the cover page of documentation generated as a Word doc. Is there a list available of the DocVariables that SqlDoc creates to be substituted into the cover page template?

Also, is there any way to control the format of the dates? I'd really like to be able to format date values in the documentation as MMMM d, yyyy hh:mm instead of dd MMMM yyyy hh:mm

Thanks,

~ Jim Fennell
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~ Jim Fennell