Living documentation

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A living documentation , including dynamic document is a description, which is kept up to date by continuous processing. A wiki is an example of living documentation .

The counterpart to living documentation is called dead or static documentation . This is a document, the content of which is not continuously updated.

legislation

In the legislation, documents are maintained that reflect the current state of the law. It must also be ensured here that old versions of the legislation are also retained as static documentation in order to ensure historical traceability.

Change and requirements management

In change and requirements management one understands documents shared by a team, which are kept up to date by the team. Regardless of the degree of formality of the documentation, conditions and requirements are defined for the team that are necessary for processing the document.

According to the single point of truth principle, if redundancy is (wanted) there should also be a central document whose accuracy is ensured.

Software development

In software development , a distinction is made between a description created and maintained by a person, which verifies the application, and an automatically created description, which was created from the program. According to the DRY principle, redundant (non-executable) documentation should also be avoided.

As part of requirements management is the requirement of the software in a live documentation in a predefined language (eg. As Gherkin ) from a human written. From this, software tests are created which, when executed, verify whether the state of the program matches the requirement.

Another type of living documentation is the human registry , which is automatically created from the program (e.g. by means of reflection ) and documents the interfaces of the program. The interfaces can be controlled directly via the human registry for test purposes.

Furthermore, non-executable documentation can also be created automatically from the source text of the program , for example by means of a creation process. This documentation includes interface descriptions and, if necessary, UML diagrams , which document the function and structure of the application. However, since such a document is redundant to the source text, such a method is only used occasionally.