Interbase Metadata

In the Isql tool the user is able to get metadata on an object that resides in the databse. How is this done. Is this stored in a file somewhere?

Not exactly a file...it's stored in the database dictionary, which is kept in the RDB$ standard tables in each InterBase database.

These tables can be queried to produce the metadata that ISQL provides. I run across these queries many times on the InterBase forums posts on developers.href.com.


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Scott Wehrly
Software Engineer
swehrly@prestwood.com

Yes, that's the contents of the BLOB field called RDB$VIEW_SOURCE in the RDB$RELATIONS table. ISQL merely fetches the BLOB contents and displays them as-is.

The Database Explorer tool does the same thing when you click the "Text" tab for a table or a view.



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Scott Wehrly
Software Engineer
swehrly@prestwood.com

Okay, this took a while to find, due to the fact that the list servers I usually get the information from were inaccessible until this morning.

I knew that I had run across the RDB$ queries to reproduce the metadata for an InterBase table before. Here is a link to a FAQ page on the MER Systems list server that provides a good portion of the RDB$ metadata queries:

Old UBB Archived Link: [URL=http://www.mers.com/IB_0259.HTML]http://www.mers.com/IB_0259.HTML[/URL]


Look around the MER Systems FAQ site. It's "chock full" of good InterBase tips from many of the frequent InterBase gurus, like Ann Harrison, Robert Schieck, Diane Brown, etc.

The other good source for InterBase tips is the search engine at
Old UBB Archived Link: [URL=http://developers.href.com.]http://developers.href.com.[/URL]
Preface your search with "zzzINTERBASE AND" to focus on the InterBase message boards.

IHTH



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Scott Wehrly
Software Engineer
swehrly@prestwood.com

This part I know, maybe I didn't explain myself correctly. In ISQL when you ask to show the metadat on a table or a database it shows the the sql script for it
ex

/* Database Owner SYSDBA*/
CREATE DATABASE 'c:\temp\test.gdb';

Something similar would be shown for a table

/*Table Customer owner SYSDBA*/
CREATE TABLE CUSTOMER
(
CUSTNUM VARCHAR(20),
NAME VARCHAR(50)
);

The above examples is what i would like to show. I want to show the sql code for each objects.

I created a database and a table, I used IBConsole to check the RDB$RElations table and also to look at the field rdb$view_source, this field showed NULL when I queried it, whats going on here?????