You can import tables from your SQL Server into your dictionary via the Import/Sync Wizard.
Open your dictionary in the Clarion IDE, then pick the Import Tables button.
Use the > (and possibly the >>) button to select the tables and views you want to add to the dictionary.
Press Finish when done.
You will need to edit the tables after they are import to adjust things like the Owner, prefixes, possibly table names.
Same applies to all of the ODBC drivers. I’m not sure about Oracle, I know that driver was different from the other SQL drivers which are all ODBC based.
In terms of adjustments: prefixes will always be first three letters plus a number for the instance, so if you had tables like Building, Building_architecture, Building_material, Building_frame you would probably want to change the prefixes from bui, bui1,bui2,bui3, which is the prefixes the import would give them.
The importer clearly believes that databases don’t really know how to deal with underscores, so My_column in the database will be imported with an external name of “MY_COLUMN”. In most cases this is harmless, but SQLite is fine with My_column as a a name, but will throw an error if you try to put anything in “MY_COLUMN”, so you have to remove all of those external names it manufactures.
I have been doing my development this way round for years (setting up tables in the database, importing them into the Clarion dictionary), mostly because that way you have more control over the way the tables are defined. For example, if I know that a number (Canadian SIN, for example) will have nine digits and no decimals I will set it up in the database as Number(9). If I let Clarion do it, the Clarion Long would be a Number (allows up to 32 digits including decimals) when clarion created the table.
I’ll also mention that the import sets up relationships in the Clarion dictionary based on foreign key constraints, including setting up aliases if there are two links to the same table.
