Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)

Consistency checks

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by Community Member

Does anyone have any info on the consistency checks in

Basic> periodic> Consistency check option

What is the impact is of running this and how should it be used

*This post is locked for comments

I have the same question (0)

All responses (3)

Answers (0)

Denis Patrakov on at

Like (2)

Report

Tables in the AX database are divided into several groups: main tables (Customers, Vendors, Ledger Accounts, Inventory Items, etc.), groups (Item groups, Customer groups, Bank groups, etc.), worksheet headers (Sales/Purchase orders, Journals of all kinds), worksheet lines (Sales lines, Journal lines), transactional tables and some others. Every main/group/worksheet header table in the AX application uses a specific data type (Extended Data Type, EDT in terms of AX development environment) for its primary key field. Such EDT has an explicit relation with the primary key field of the corresponding table. When this EDT is used for a field in another table, that table gains an implicit relation with the corresponding main/group/worksheet header table (that field becomes a foreign key). In some scenarios explicit relations between tables are also created. The kernel then can use all these implicit and explicit relations to validate if a value of a table field is a valid foreign key. Basically such validations take most of the time when a consistency check is run.
But of course consistency checks are not all that trivial. For instance, there must be 5 related records in 3 tables for an inventory item to be visible on the Items form. If any of the records is missing then you will not be able to see the item on the Items form although you will be able to select it in other forms. Inventory management/Item consistency check can fix this for you and create a missing record. And Inventory management/Item/On-hand check can recalculate InventSum records by inventory transactions and recreate them - in case InventSum is corrupted. Bills of materials checks use even more complex algorithms to validate the data consistency.
Consistency checks work in either check or fix mode. In both modes detailed warnings are displayed, in the check mode your data is not altered in any way; the fix mode invokes some complex algorithms to restore the data consistency. There's also a field "From date" on the consistency check form. It allows you to narrow the check scope by setting the earliest transaction date to start from for checks that involve transactional tables like InventTrans; when an explicit date field cannot be defined then the record creation timestamp is used (for main and group tables).
Note also that all complex module-related checks depend on "simple" consistency checks based on implicit and explicit table relations: you cannot recalculate InventSum until you check all the inventory items and you cannot check Sales taxes until you check the general ledger accounts. But these "simple" checks take a lot of time unless your database is tiny, and you might easily hit the default infolog message limit (10000) if you run them. They are not something you can run just for fun like rebuilding an index on a table but in case of a minor inconsistency they can be really helpful.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
TVO 125 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hmmm,

the only Information about the fix mode is the following sentence:

"the fix mode invokes some complex algorithms to restore the data consistency".

I would like to know what these complex algorithms do.

Thanks,

Tilman

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Hossein.K 6,648 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi,

As per this article, SQL Server 2016 has a great boost for this area as well:

www.mssqltips.com/.../faster-dbcc-checkdb-with-sql-server-2016

docs.microsoft.com/.../dbcc-checkdb-transact-sql

Was this reply helpful? Yes No