The preview and the generated documentation show almost identical information. For details of differences between these views, and other restrictions on the content of generated documentation, see What's not in the documentation?

Documentation overview

Formatting of generated documentation depends on which file type you choose when you generate the documentation and settings in the application you use to view the documentation. The following examples show formatting with the web page (HTML) file type.

Object type summaries

To see a summary for an object type, click its name. For example, click Tables to see a summary of all the tables in the database.

The Description column shows the text that has been added to the database using the MS_Description extended property.

Object documentation

To see information about a particular object, click the object name. The documentation shows the object's properties and SQL creation script.

For tables, the documentation also includes details of columns, indexes, triggers, constraints, permissions, and other extended properties such as input masks. The following icons are used in documentation for tables:

The following example shows the documentation for the WidgetPrices table.