As business intelligence and database architects and designers, we often need to assess and affect a data definition change across an entire database.
An example of this is changing the data type of a column AccountNumber from the generic data type varchar(10) to a user defined SQL data type of AccountNumber across an entire database.
The manual method for this is to attempt to recall from memory every table, view, etc, where the account number value is used, hope you haven't forgotten any, then visit each remembered object and change the definition. BI Documenter makes this task a lot easier with a cross referenced list of columns within a database called the Columns Cross Index.
The Columns Cross Index shows column names cross referenced with a list of tables and views that contain a column with the same name:
And is also clickable to reveal the data type definitions for each column (and a column that we have forgotten to change!):
Thanks to the team at SDM for suggesting this and the Parameters Cross Index in BI Documenter!