Last month I sat down with Blain Barton and TechNet Edge in an interview (Blain Barton Interviews Raymond James Chad Miller on PowerShell) and described a PowerShell-based solution for providing a classic centralized data dictionary of various data sources to our IT users. I’m pleased to announce I’ve started a CodePlex project called Really Simple Data Dictionary or RSDD which demonstrates the coding techniques used to develop the solution.
What is RSDD?
RSDD is a meta data collector for SQL Server and Oracle. RSDD imports meta data into a central SQL Server repository from INFORMATION_SCHEMA or equivalent supported systems views. RSDD is packaged as PowerShell module, to get started you’ll need PowerShell 2.0 and SQL Server instance to host the repository. Check out the documentation for setup instructions. Once you’ve collected the meta data, the data can easily be exposed via reports or PowerPivot (see screenshots).
Next Steps
- Install RSDD (As always: Test in non-production environment first!)
- Leave feedback on the project site
Interested in Working on RSDD?
Contact me if you’re interested in contributing to RSDD
