Thanks Brian
As you'll see from my next post, I came to a similar conclusion.
"Brian Moran" <brian@solidqualitylearning.com> wrote in message
news:ugK$3KMGEHA.3880@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...[color=blue]
> Of course you could roll your own...
>
> You should also review this in BOL:
>
> Property Management
> Microsoft® SQL ServerT 2000 introduces extended properties that users can
> define on various objects in a database. These extended properties can be
> used to store application-specific or site-specific information about the
> database objects. Because the property is stored in the database, all
> applications reading the property can evaluate the object in the same way.
> This helps enforce consistency in how data is treated by all of the[/color]
programs[color=blue]
> in the system.
>
> Each extended property has a user-defined name and value. The value of an
> extended property is a sql_variant that can contain up to 7500 bytes of
> data. Individual database objects can have multiple extended properties.
>
> Extended properties are managed using three system stored procedures:
> sp_addextendedproperty, sp_updateextendedproperty, and
> sp_dropextendedproperty. You can read the value of an existing extended
> property using the system function FN_LISTEXTENDEDPROPERTY.
>
> There is no convention or standard for defining extended properties. The
> database designer sets the rules specifying the property names and[/color]
contents[color=blue]
> when the database is designed, and then the applications accessing the
> database have to be coded to follow those rules or conventions.
>
>
> See Also
>
> Using Extended Properties on Database Objects
>
> fn_listextendedproperty
>
> sp_addextendedproperty
>
> sp_dropextendedproperty
>
> sp_updateextendedproperty
>
> ©1988-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
> a quick google on those procs and functions will show you a number of[/color]
people[color=blue]
> who have built reasonably helpful sample apps for managing these[/color]
properties.[color=blue]
>
>
> --
>
> Brian Moran
> Principal Mentor
> Solid Quality Learning
> SQL Server MVP
>
http://www.solidqualitylearning.com
>
>
> "Daniel M" <daniel.malcolm@becta.org.uk> wrote in message
> news:%23D3JMBMGEHA.1884@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...[color=green]
> > I'm building a medium-scale data-entry web application, which involves
> > creating data entry forms, record listings and detail screens for lots[/color][/color]
of[color=blue][color=green]
> > database tables.
> >
> > Rather than designing a series of similar web pages for each table I'm
> > looking into recording metadata about tables / columns in the database[/color][/color]
and[color=blue][color=green]
> > using this to determine presentation.
> >
> > Let's keep things simple for now and assume that I'm interested in[/color][/color]
adding[color=blue][color=green]
> > more user friendly captions to replace actual column names, e.g. 'Unit
> > Price' instead of 'unit_price' and would also like column descriptions[/color][/color]
to[color=blue]
> be[color=green]
> > easily available. If this data were held in the database, then captions[/color]
> and[color=green]
> > descriptions could be looked up dynamically within the application. This
> > would be better than defining captions individually within a .Net[/color][/color]
DataGrid[color=blue][color=green]
> > or HTML template. It would also allow metadata to be shared between
> > applications.
> >
> > A brief search around dev sites hasn't revealed anything. Are there any
> > recommended ways of doing this?
> >
> > This actually looks pretty easy, the data could be held in 2 tables:
> >
> > TABLE: table_metadata:
> > - table_id
> > - db_table_name (name of table in database)
> > - caption (user friendly title for table)
> > - description
> >
> > TABLE: column_metadata
> > - id
> > - table_id
> > - db_column_name (name of table in database)
> > - caption (user friendly column title)
> > - description
> >
> > Thanks in advance
> >
> > Dan
> >
> >
> >[/color]
>
>[/color]
