SYSCOLUMNS is rarely if ever used. Although fundamentally a good idea, especially considering the similar manner in which relational databases expose their table definitions, the OpenInsight implementation of SYSCOLUMNS came later than the database implementation itself, and suffered accordingly.
SYSCOLUMNS is not utilized in the database implementation because the database was already implemented;
Since it is built on top of existing data structures (dictionaries), its reliability is affected by any problems in those data structures;
Since application databases are often quite large in terms of the number of tables, combining information from those tables’ dictionaries can be a lengthy operation.
Viewing the information in SYSCOLUMNS is a handy tool for developers doing a search to find all data tables that use a particular data type, or have a particular column name, etc. Also, a problem using SYSCOLUMNS may be an indicator that a problem exists in one of the application’s dictionaries.
