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.