Dynamics CRM Database Structure

Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses metadata driven architecture to provide the flexibility to create custom entities and additional system entity attributes. This structure also makes upgrades and the transportation of customization easier.

Metadata driven architecture (MDDA) is used to abstract function from logic.  Metadata creates a logical self-describing framework for allowing the data to drive application features and functionality. Metadata is commonly found inside of database schemas, XML configuration files, SOAP WSDLS, HTML web pages, rules engines and source code.

The following table lists the objects described by the metadata.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM metadata contains the description of system and custom entities, attributes and the relationship between entities for an organization. The MetadataService Web service provides the messages that you can use to read or write the metadata. This Web service can be used to perform the following actions.

Read Actions

• Retrieve the metadata for system or custom entities.
• Retrieve the attributes for an entity.
• Retrieve the metadata for a specific attribute such as the possible state names or the picklist values for an attribute.
• Retrieve all the entities and determine which entities are custom entities.
• Determine whether the metadata has changed since a previous retrieve.

Write Actions

• Create a custom entity.
• Add or update an attribute for an entity, either system or custom.
• Create or delete a relationship between two entities.
• Add or remove an option from a picklist attribute.
• Write an installation and uninstall program for your custom solution.

In the example below you can see two custom entities; Bank Account and Deposit Box.

Account <-> Bank Account – this entity represent a bank customer who can have multiple bank accounts hence there is a 1:N relationship

Safe Deposit <-> Bank Account – multiple safe deposits can be related to a single bank account hence a N:1 relationship

Safe Deposit <-> Account – multiple safe deposits can be owned by a single customer i.e Account hence a N:1 relationship

Visual representation of metadata can be very useful, especially when you are trying to describe the relationship between entities in the system. You can use the Metadata Diagram sample code provided for Microsoft Dynamics CRM to generate the entity relationship diagrams.

While deploying Dynamics CRM, we must remember that CRM deployment will contain these Database;

Will be writing another blog about CRM entity model, till then happy CRMing!