New Data Types: objects using these types are fully supported for documenting; this also includes support of user-defined data types based on these types:

Date and Time – simplifying your work with date and time data, providing increased date range, fractional seconds precision, and time zone support:

• Date – defines a date within the accuracy of one day
• Time – defines a time of a day based on a 24-hour clock within the accuracy of 100 nanoseconds
• Datetimeoffset – defines a date that is combined with a time of a day that has time zone awareness and is based on a 24-hour clock within the accuracy of 100 nanoseconds
• Datetime2 – defines a date that is combined with a time of day that is based on 24-hour clock within the accuracy of 100 nanoseconds: can be considered as an extension of the existing datetime type

Hierarchy – allowing you to construct relationships among data elements within a table

• Hierarchyid – represents position in a hierarchy and sets the desired relationship between rows

Spatial – predefined CLR data types in SQL Server allowing you to represent information about the physical location and shape of geometric objects

• Geography – represents data in a round-earth coordinate system and stores ellipsoidal (round-earth) data, such as GPS latitude and longitude coordinates
• Geometry – represents data in a Euclidean (flat) coordinate system

Enhancements in indexes: all the new index properties show up in the documentation and TOC seamlessly to ordinary indexes

• Spatial Indexes – allowing you to index a spatial column of geography or geometry data types. The index documentation template now contains a new index property indicating if the index is spatial
• Relational (filtered) Indexes – optimized non-clustered indexes specially developed to allow working with queries from a well-defined subset of data using a filter predicate. In additional to the new spatial property the index property table now displays the filter condition of a relational index and indicates if an index has filter

Enhancements in column properties: tables with such columns are fully supported for documenting and new column attributes show up in the DDL section of the documentation without limitations

• Sparse columns - ordinary columns that have an optimized storage for null values
• XML COLUMN_SET - a column of this type is only materialized when selected, and will return you all the non-NULL sparse columns in a row as an XML BLOB
• FILESTREAM varbinary (max) – the new way of storing BLOB data allowing you to store the data in the file system. Unlike columns defined with FILESTREAM attribute the ordinary varbinary(max) columns store their data in the tables. The table and index documentation templates were specially redesigned to indicate FILESTREAM file group and partition scheme in the table or index properties

Note: The only limitation is that FILESTREAM filegroups aren’t documented and thus tables with FILESTREAM columns aren’t grouped in the TOC

Enhancements in procedure parameters and user-defined types: all new enhancements are fully supported

• User defined table type – allows you to define special types having table definition. Variables of such types can be used to store a result set for processing at a later time and passed as procedure parameters or used within the procedure bodies directly. The user-defined type documentation template was specially updated to indicate if UDT is a table type; procedures with parameters of such types and variables of table types inside their bodies are documented seamlessly to the ordinary ones
• Readonly parameters – indicates that the parameter cannot be updated or modified within the body of the procedure. The procedure documentation template was redesigned to display this attribute right next to the procedure parameters indicating if a parameter is READONLY. This attribute also shows up in the DDL section of a procedure

Data compression in tables, indexed views, indexes and constraints: the new object attributes are fully supported for documenting and show up in the DDL section of the respective objects

• Data (Row and Page) Compression – allows you to compress whole tables, indexed views, indexes, primary key and unique constraints; can be configured for a whole table, indexed view and non-clustered index and for each partition in case of partitioned indexes or tables. ROW compression means storing fixed length data in variable length storage format and PAGE compression means minimizing the data redundancy

Change Tracking and Change Data capture: both features are fully supported by the application

• Change Tracking – built-in server’s ability that allows you to answer the following questions: “What rows have changed for a user table?” and “Has a row changed?” The table documentation template was redesigned to indicate if Change Tracking feature is enabled for a table; enabling or disabling of this feature shows up in the DDL section of your tables
• Change Data capture – this new SQL Server feature provides historical change information for a user table by capturing both the fact that DML changes were made and the actual data that was changed. Changes are captured by using an asynchronous process that reads the transaction log and has a low impact on the system. All system procedures of this feature can be documented along with SQL Server Agent jobs for capturing and cleaning up data in a database

SSIS 2008: the application fully supports documenting of packages of SQL Server Integration Services 2008; they are documented seamlessly to SQL Server 2005 ones without limitations

SSIS Packages from SQL server, SSIS package storage, or from your file directory can be documented, including:

• Connection Managers
• Event Handlers
• Executables
• Log Providers
• Precedence Constraints
• Variables
• Package Source

ApexSQL Doc 2008 is tightly coupled with Extended properties. These properties are not only documented but can be edited directly throught the application's powerful internal Extended Propertys Editor.

The Extended Property Editor supports a variety of grid display options. Using the grid's Context Menu, you can expand the tree or collapse it.

ApexSQL Doc has a powerful command line interface that supports a variety of option switches. All GUI Project wizard configurations can be performed via command line interface. This is helpful for scheduled batch runs and large database documenting.

ApexSQL Doc allows you to include or exclude all Server (i.e. Logins) and Database level object types (i.e. Tables) as well as other individual objects. Filters can be applied using regular expressions.

ApexSQL Doc offers a powerful, graphical dependency feature based on proprietary parsing technology (not native SQL server methods that rely on sysdepends table). Several customizable options are available including Dependency Type, Dependency Layout, and Scale.

You can choose the default format option, Visual Studio 2005, or select a custom stylesheet. An inline preview feature allows you to view the formatted output without leaving the app. You can also add custom HTML header and footer.

ApexSQL Doc can generate your documentation ini 3 output types:

• CHM - Compiled Help Format or CHM is the standard for software help files. It contains a Table of Contents tree, Index and Search modules. Topics are easily browsed via the TOC or internal links. CHM output exists as single *.chm files that can be opened independently without any additional software.
• HTML - HTML format consists of multiple individual .html files interconnected via links. HTML format is helpful for posting on corporate intranets. These individual HTML files can be compiled later into a .chm file.
• HTML 2.0 - HXS (HTML 2.0) is the next generation Help File format introduced by Microsoft and it is included in tools like SQL Server Management Studio for SQL Server 2005. HXS adds powerful new capabilities including more toolbar options, better searching, indexing and setting your favorites topics. To open HXS files additional software and configuration changes are required.

ApexSQL Doc calculates dependencies based on a proprietary parsing technology (not native SQL server methods that rely on sysdepends table). This algorithm is more accurate than SQL server and other documentation tools that rely on sysdepends, as well leading competitors that also calculate dependencies independent of sysdepends.

Click here to read more about The Power of the Parser – How important are error free scripts and accurate documentation to you?

System objects like system stored procedure, functions, tables can be documented.