Open Source Tools For Documentation Creation? 9
"I've found some tools I could use, but they all live on That Other System. The place I'm doing this for is open to considering Open Source tools for the project, so I have a chance to throw a couple of more chinks into the IS ivory tower armor if I can find find the right tools.
So I'd love some feedback from the group mind: what tools do you use to help keep a handle on large project designs, especially those involving database systems. I need process flow documentation and a way to manage the database definitions, but I'd love to hear about all of your favorite tools. I'd love to be able to bring forward a complete project management solution that's open source, just to prove it can be done to the people who believe life begins and ends with three letters and white coats...."
Re:Only one answer... (Score:1)
Sure, you'll probably find something there. But half the time, stuff on SF is still in alpha stage development. (Sometimes permenantly stalled there.) That's OK if you're a weekend hacker, but if you're using it for a production system, you want something that *works*, not something you're going to have to spend two months debugging.
Even if it *is* "release" quality code, that doesn't mean that it'll do what you want. The little you read on the web page may make it seem like the second coming, but when you actually wade in, you'll find that it blows *.cx
What I'm saying is that the poster wanted suggestions on particular solutions. He wants to know WHAT WORKS, and what doesn't. I'm sure he knows where he can find a boatload of half finished text editors, but what he really wants is proven solutions.
Not to mention the fact that there could be a superb solution lurking on company page somewhere, which is used for internal development, but which hasn't thrown itself into the melee of Sourceforge and other OSS hosting pages.
--
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Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for life.
Forget to tell a man not to eat fugu, and he won't live very long.
Integrated CASE (Score:2)
1. Cross-referenced data elements and pseudocode. This means that any time you build a statement like "put tab A in slot B" then tab A and slot B are already defined in the data model. In fact just about all the nouns and relationships (eg "find all where is ") should be pickable from the data model (the items in above should all be such). Even the types of local variables should be pickable from the model.
2. In keeping with the above, you need a rich data model. That means you have to give relationships names and correct cardinalities, and put in things like delete rules for foreign keys. Too many times I see "data modellers" slap together a few entities with unnamed lines for the relationships, and then end up with a denormalized mess because no one could figure out what the relationships mean. Incorrect or misunderstood relationships are where most bugs come from. Keeping the data model up-to-date can be a real pain, but the alternative is chaos.
Re:Integrated CASE (Score:2)
Oops, I used angle brackets and parts of my example got stripped out. I'll try brackets (and previewing for a change):
The bracketed items would be from the data dictionary...at least you can see how little is left without them(!).
Doxygen! (Score:2)
www.doxygen.org [doxygen.org]
Only one answer... (Score:1)
Re:Try HeaderDoc. (Score:1)
1. Get the complete source code for free.
2. Get binaries for free.
As far as I'm concerned, that makes the software as free as I want it, and at the right price, and with the freedom for me to do whatever I want with it.
As for better products - I don't care about that either. There is always something better coming along for everything.... even better than whatever program you claim is better than HeaderDoc.
The truth of the matter - I was suggesting one product as a solution to the guy's question. You can reply claiming that the product you're talking about is freer or better - you're missing the point, which is to suggest the idea to the guy asking the question, not the guy giving his own suggested solution.
Try HeaderDoc. (Score:2)
"HeaderDoc is a tool for generating HTML reference documentation from comments in C or C++ header files. It is written in Perl for easy portability. Similar to JavaDoc, it allows developers to easily document their interfaces and export that information into HTML."
Realistically, I'm not sure if this helps your cause, but I hope it does!
Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling (Score:3)
Look at the Toolkit for Conceptual Modeling [utwente.nl] It runs under Linux and Solaris and is distributed under the GPL. It can be used to design tables, trees, ER diagrams, UML(use cases, collaboration diagrams, etc.), data and event flow diagrams, state transition diagrams, and many other types of documents. It can output data in PostScript, encapsulated PostScript, or FIG. I've used it for projects before and it offers pretty much all of the functionality you would get from a program like Visio. (And if you drop the TCM diagrams into LaTeX, you'll get something that looks better than anything you could hope to produce on "that other platform".)
Good luck!
Synopsis (Score:2)
Done by one of the Berlin [berlin-consortium.org] programmers.
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!