For all database object types chosen in the previous step you can use filtering to narrow down by name or pattern the objects you want to document. Just check the appropriate box to make the corresponding item in the Treeview visible or simply use the “Check All” or “Uncheck-All” checkboxes. After you’ve made your selection of objects types you want to apply filtering on, you select the corresponding item in the Treeview. This brings you to the actual filter where you can enter your patterns which a database object name of that given type must match to be included in the documentation. This filtering mechanism is the same as in all the other ApexSQL tools I’ve reviewed this far. It works by means of regular expressions. To demonstrate how this filtering process looks like, I’ve chosen to filter on tables names.
Suppose we only want to include certain tables that contain the patterns N*:
After typing in the pattern, ApexSQL Doc is displaying the tables that match these patterns in the right list. From there you can choose which table will be included in the final documentation.
Another notable feature of ApexSQL Doc is that the style in which the final documentation is created, is not static or predefined. You are able to use a custom style sheet that will be used for the documentation. By default, the tool includes a style sheet that mimics the Visual Studio 2005 style. The corresponding css file ships with the software, so that you can have a look at it, when you decide to use your own for your documentation. We will see some examples of this final output a little bit later on.
