We have two interns that have created (or should I say designed ?) a notes-database.
All the code they produced should be included in the report they are writing. As you have probably guessed, the design-synopsis is not really useable and I was wondering if there are any other means to get a more readable overview of the code.
One of the options I was considering is to export the design of the database to a DXL-file and use an XSLT to transform it to, well euh, a pdf-document for instance.
Can anyone point me to a (preferably freeware (since we 're only going to be using this once)) solution.
Subject: Something more readable then the design-synopsis ?
This is the best tool on the market for this type of activity, and the price is so cheap that we’ve used it once in some companies - then never used it again! It still justified the cost!
Subject: Something more readable then the design-synopsis ?
Philippe,I have come across this problem many many times in my career.
My traditional answer was to do as another responder said “copy it into Word, and Edit it”. The problem with this method is that it is a lot of manual work. When you change the database in any way the documentation is then out-of-date.
In today’s age however we have better methods than that. DXL is a better method. However, you still need to define a lot of things.
I was working on a project to export Lotus Notes databases out into an XML format formatted by XSL. The output would then form the input file for an XML based Modelling tool.
This is quite possible but I do not have the time in life to do all the research needed to make it happen.
It would require having a Lotus Notes definition for each and every component in the Model. This too is possible but I don’t have the time to do it.
You probably can guess that it would then be a matter of exporting the design out of Notes and inporting it into the modelling tool and then Printing the result. Once everything is defined, you could do it for any database you choose to do.
Subject: Something more readable then the design-synopsis ?
Seems like every place I’ve worked that requires any more than bare bones, rudimentary documentation has “custom” documentation templates that require a full-fledged workup outside of any sort of code analysis/code migration tools.