Old Customizations

Kanani Reichlin said:

Should I delete them? Feels scary to me...

Never. If you have a directory, repository, etc., of code, a new sub dir named "old" or "archive" or the like would match what I do. I even throw a readme.txt file with relevant info in there sometimes, even if I'm the only one that will ever read it.

So I made aspreadsheet of all our DB customisations by type ie: Procs, Views, Tables, Functions etc and them saved them all to a repsitory as .sql

For the Custom reports I made a similar catalogue and saved the (SSRS) .rdl .xml .sql files into folders and archived.  Infomaker .pbl .xml the same

My hope is to get a description of each and put it in our documentation library (then charge admittance with a discount for families and small groups)

This.  I do exactly this.  And thus far I AM the only one who reads it.  But it makes me feel better.

Ones that we don't use anymore I throw 'xxx' in front! In the same boat where I think I'm the only one that cares, but it also makes me feel better. 

Thanks y'all.  I came into this role after it had been vacant for several months and I didn't find much documentation.  If a directory, repository, readme file were to exist, would it be saved in SSMS?

Kanani Reichlin said:

If a directory, repository, readme file were to exist, would it be saved in SSMS?

I was assuming a network location there. If I get hit by a bus, all of the files under "tessitura" in my home dir (or OneDrive these days) will contain everything anyone would want to know, and so much more... ;-)

As Chris said, likely not in SSMS (and, if you cannot find reference to one anywhere, unfortunately it probably does not exist).  Usually a repository is kept somewhere separate (e.g. bitbucket or AWS codecommit); that is where I keep all my code and readme files.

Chris Jensen said:

If I get hit by a bus

We don't get hit by buses, we win lotteries!  

I also (like Nicki) relabel, but with a 'z' in front so it drops to the bottom of lists.  I may change this up some day, but for now, and with so many other more urgent things to do, this is the easiest.  

I think you're right that it doesn't exist.  I looked through our old network location Tessitura folder and just found old copies of Tessitura provided documentation, stuff from when we were self hosted, and some bits and bobs of SQL from 2005-2008 (some written by Andrew Recinos himself! nifty!) I created a documentation team in 2020 but we've mostly focused on process documentation.  I need to wrap my brain around documenting the history of our entire database. Woof.

I will typically export the SQL object to a file (with the rows if it's a table) using the context menus in SSMS, then store them somewhere with some documentation (although I try to keep some documentation.  It can be an arduous task to ensure that you can disentangle the objects from other working objects, though, and this has prevented me from doing it as much as I would like to.

Tessitura's stance is generally, "Whatever, it's fine, just leave it in there" but I find all those extra tables and configuration rows really annoying to have to scroll past, much less having to remember what is something I have to consider (i.e. in this precise case of assessing customization incompatibilities) and what is really deprecated.