ACCPAC DataDict Table

Question

Anyone know what is being stored in the TABLEDATA column in the DATADICT table in ACCPAC database? I tried converting the binary column to text and was not successful. Please let me know if anyone can shed some insight.

Answer 1

The DATADICT table contains a proprietary representation of all of the tables and field definitions for that database. It is used during the database dump/load process so that when a database is being re-built the correct tables are created.

Not all Accpac/Sage ERP 300 databases have the same tables. As modules are activated in a company new tables are added to that database. The DATADICT table is updated with the table structures.

There's no real value for you as the programmer to dig around in there to learn about the database. Accpac/Sage ERP 300 is database agnostic so it doesn't take advantage of specific database features like relationships and foreign keys. The business logic layers manage all of that. How that is related to your question is that the DATADICT table will be a simple listing of tables and fields - information that you can pull from the schema itself.

So the best that you can do when figuring out the database is to generate a listing of tables and fields and refer to the object model documentation provided by Sage. That documentation gives you field descriptions which can assist you when you're interfacing with the database.