Structure of Vertex Databases

You can define your own databases in Vertex, or you can edit the structure of an existing database, see: Define the Structure of a Database

Special attention needs to be paid when editing the names of the fields in an existing database, as the change must be updated in all the files in which the old database name is used. Otherwise, there will be problems using the database.

• The field names in the database are used for display, selection, and list formats.

You must not delete a row that contains a database field name from the database.

• If you delete the field from the database, the data saved in the field in question on each database row will be lost.
• Instead of deleting the field, you can set its length as zero (0).

We do not recommend increasing the length of fields in the Vertex archive database, as some of the fields have fixed values. One of these fields is the SUBDIR field. If you increase the value of the field length, problems may occur in the program.

The following files will be created when defining the database structure:

• d_DATABASE - Contents of the database (data)
• d_DATABASEc - Structure definition of the database
• d_DATABASEl - Lock file of the database

When copying a database, you need only copy the d_DATABASE and d_DATABASEc files; the lock file will be created again when needed.