How to link DOCUVALUE table to related business metadata - database

Question

I am trying to pull a report of all the documents referenced in AX, and I'm having a heck of a time figuring out the AX database structure. Ideally I want to pull a list of documents and the Journal / Batch # each is associated with.
In our AX environment, all documents are stored on a share (i.e. they're not actually stored as BLOBs in the AX database).
It looks like the DOCUVALUE table is the principal table that references the documents, having the ORIGINALFILENAME and other columns that seem to "point" to the files on the AX share. But DOCUVALUE doesn't contain any useful business metadata.
After a bit of exploring, it looks like like the DOCUREF table relates to DOCUVALUE (DOCUVALUE.RECID = DOCUREF.VALUERECID) which helps a little - gives you the Company #, but that's about it.
After a bit more exploring, it looked like it would be possible to join across to LEDGERJOURNALTABLE as shown below:
select ljt.journalnum, filename + '.' + filetype filename, ljt.name journal_name,
dr.refcompanyid, convert(varchar(10), ljt.posteddatetime,111) posted_date,
ljt.createdby, convert(numeric, ljt.journaltotalcredit) journalamount
from LEDGERJOURNALTABLE ljt, DOCUREF dr, DOCUVALUE dv
where dv.RECID = dr.VALUERECID and dr.refrecid = ljt.recid
order by 1,2
This looked promising, so I pulled out a data listing and asked one of our key business users to review the results. She indicated that it was accurate to some extent, but there were other areas where the document referenced just didn't have any relation to the JournalNum in the listing.
So - I'm at a bit of a dead end - I've spent further time generating SQL statements to harvest data using specific RECID values, trying other joins, but each time I just disappear down a rabbit hole.
Any ideas? Any help gratefully received!!

Answer 1

The AX document management framework is designed so that a document can be attached to any data row in any table. What you're trying to do is far easier in AX, but we'll stick with SQL for the question.
The problem you're having is you don't know the reference objects because you're ignoring REFTABLEID.
The key fields that connect a denormalized "document" to the associated business data are REFTABLEID, REFCOMPANYID, and REFRECID (you already have the last one).
So start with this query below:
SELECT sd.NAME
,sd.SQLNAME
,dr.*
,dv.*
FROM DOCUREF dr
,DOCUVALUE dv
,SQLDICTIONARY sd
WHERE dv.RECID = dr.VALUERECID
AND sd.TABLEID = dr.REFTABLEID
AND sd.FIELDID = 0 -- Indicates it is a table and not a table field
AND sd.NAME = 'LEDGERJOURNALTABLE' -- Instead of hardcoding, join & query
You'll have to get creative depending on your use with SQL, You'll want to remove the hardcoded 'LEDGERJOURNALTABLE' and then use sd.SQLNAME to join to the actual SQL table. Then if that SQL table has DataAreaId, you'd likely want to join it to dr.REFCOMPANYID.
Or you can hardcode the tables or whatever you want to do. You should be aware you can attach documents to journal headers OR lines...or many other rows for that matter.
Just start exploring the data and you should be able to figure out what you want with that query above.
So for your sample query, you can see I added 2 lines. Your query will only work when joined for LedgerJournalTable. You'll have to do some dynamic SQL or use a cursor or something if you want to report on every attachment.
SELECT ljt.journalnum
,filename + '.' + filetype filename
,ljt.name journal_name
,dr.refcompanyid
,convert(VARCHAR(10), ljt.posteddatetime, 111) posted_date
,ljt.createdby
,convert(NUMERIC, ljt.journaltotalcredit) journalamount
FROM LEDGERJOURNALTABLE ljt
,DOCUREF dr
,DOCUVALUE dv
WHERE dv.RECID = dr.VALUERECID
AND dr.REFRECID = ljt.RECID
AND dr.REFCOMPANYID = ljt.DATAAREAID -- ADDED
AND dr.REFTABLEID = 211 -- ADDED TableId for LedgerJournalTable
ORDER BY 1
,2