If you read my blog you know from time to time I will blog about an exceptional third party SQL tool. Previously I’ve blogged about Task Factory and BI xPress, two amazing SSIS development tools. Well this week I figured I would talk about a killer SQL documentation tool called BI Documenter.

BI Documenter allows you to quickly and easily document your entire BI environment. So unlike the other popular tools out there, BI Documenter will document SQL Server databases (2000, 2005, 2008 & R2), SSIS packages, SSAS cubes, and SSRS reports. Because all of these objects can be documented in a single snap shot, you are then able to easily perform impact analysis across all objects, which has a pretty slick UI and is very intuitive. You can also do snapshot comparison across your whole stack, so you can see how any object in a snapshot differs from a previous snapshot.

One other thing to mention about documenting SSIS packages is that BI Documenter is the only documentation tool that not only documents the SSIS packages textually, but also visually!

This means that after you document you SSIS packages, you can view the SSIS packages (Including the Data Flow Tasks!) just like you would in BIDS. Very cool!

BI Documenter is a pretty cool documentation tool that is very well rounded and since it’s the only tool on the market that can document the entire BI stack all together, its basically you’re only choice if you want to do impact analysis across the stack. BI Documenter also has a lot of awesome features coming up in the next release such as documenting server level objects, like SQL Agent Jobs, Linked Servers, Backup Locations, and others.

If you’re in the market for a rock solid documentation tool with the kind of support you can count on, I’d highly recommend that you check out BI Documenter and download the free trial. It’s at the very least worth a look.