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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,... / Am I allowed to execut...
Customer experience | Sales, Customer Insights,...
Suggested Answer

Am I allowed to execute an "Alter column" statement directly on DB?

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Posted on by Community Member

Hiya

Wondering if anyone can help a total newbie to Dynamics 365. Have started working on an existing implementation of Dynamics 365 (on premise) and am told by current developers that under no circumstances can I amend a column in a table for one of our entities directly on the DB. I am simply wanting to default an INT column to value 1.

They tell me "Dynamics is a black box and you will be breaking the law if you amend directly". This can't be true can it?

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

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  • Suggested answer
    Roberto Ilidio Profile Picture
    Roberto Ilidio Microsoft Employee on at

    Hi Paul,

    Yes, your colleagues are right, you should not apply this kind of changes directly in the database, never. It will brake the system in a unpredictable ways and it will be hard to fix it later.

    You can define a default value to an attribute in a Form in supported way, through Dynamics, for example using Business Rules or Jscript etc

    Eg.: www.marksgroup.net/.../

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    Doesn't this mean I need to add default values for the same property in every form in the system? If I have > 1 location where I can create/update an entity then this rule needs to be applied to each instead of a simple database level constraint? Seems mad to a newbie!

  • Suggested answer
    Fubar Profile Picture
    Fubar 2,761 on at

    As already stated generally touching the database is not a supported customization, but some performance type activates are allowed (technically, if you do make unsupported customizations and end up 'breaking' something Microsoft can decide to not help you fix things).  This is how it has been for years and is unlikely to change (and in Online you can't even see the Database).  You need to remember that Microsoft have a lot of logic built into their layers above the database and any change you make could inadvertently impact it. 

    Depending on exactly what is needed, then Business Rules (2 different levels specific form, all forms, server), JavaScript, Workflows, Power Automate Flow, or a Plugin are all possibilities.

  • Suggested answer
    Adrian Begovich Profile Picture
    Adrian Begovich 1,032 Moderator on at

    Hi Paul Moores,

    Writing directly to the Dynamics CRM SQL database is not a supported activity. Do it at your own risk.

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