Business Central Bevica data structures

Understand Bevica in Business Central: tenants, environments, companies, extensions, AL objects, and tools like metadata pages and Page Inspection.

This page is intended as an introduction to how Business Central Bevica is technically structured and how to see data and the relationships between that data.

Prerequisites

• Access to a Business Central environment.

Infrastructure

Business Central Bevica sits inside the Microsoft ecosystem which provides a hierarchical approach to its structure:

1. Tenant
2. Environments
3. Companies

More information here: Understanding the Infrastructure of Business Central Online (Microsoft Learn)

Extensions

Features and functionality are provided within an environment by extensions. To see the extensions installed in your environment navigate to Extension Management. The primary Business Central extension is provided by Microsoft and is called Base Application. All other extensions interact with this primary extension.

AL Language

AL is the programming language that is used for manipulating data such as retrieving, inserting, and modifying records in an environment. It controls the execution of the various application objects, such as pages, reports, or codeunits. AL provides the business rules to ensure that the data, which is stored in an environment, is meaningful and consistent with the way you do business.

The main application objects are listed here:

Field	Note	Further Information
Table	Tables are the core objects used to store data. No matter how data is registered in the product - from a web service to a finger swipe on the phone app, the results of that transaction will be recorded in a table.	Table object (Microsoft Learn)
Page	Pages are the main way to display and organise visual data. They are the primary object that a user will interact with and have a different behaviour based on the type of page created. Pages are designed independently of the device they are to be rendered on, and in this way the same page can be reused across phone, tablet, and web clients.	Page object (Microsoft Learn)
Report	Reports are used to print or display information from a database. You can use a report to structure and summarise information, and to print documents, such as sales quotes and invoices. They can also be used to transform data.	Report object (Microsoft Learn)
Codeunit	A codeunit is a container for AL code that you can use in many application objects.	Codeunit object (Microsoft Learn)
Query	Query objects can retrieve records from one or more tables and then combine the data into rows and columns in a single dataset. Query objects can also perform calculations on data, such as finding the sum or average of all values in a column of the dataset.	Query object (Microsoft Learn)
XMLPorts	XMLports are used to export and import data between an external source and Business Central Bevica. Sharing data between different computer systems is seamless when it is shared in an XML format.	XMLPort object (Microsoft Learn)
Profile	The profile object contains the rules and other objects to build an individual experience for each user profile. The Profile object performs a validation to check whether the specified role centre page exists, page customization objects exist when a new profile object is created.	Profile object (Microsoft Learn)
Permission Set	The permission set object lists permissions on objects. Permission sets are building blocks used to compose assignable permission sets and entitlements. Assignable permission sets are permissions that an admin can assign to users in Business Central Bevica, using the Permission Sets page. An entitlement is a collection of permission sets that constitute a set of meaningful permissions for a user.	Permission Set object (Microsoft Learn)

Data structures / data schema

The software provides a number of pages to help understand the data structures within the environment you are logging into.

Table Metadata

This displays all the tables within the environment with additional information. Where a page exists for any specified table select the ribbon Run Object option.

Business Central “Table Metadata” list page, used to browse tables and open related pages via Run Object.

Table Information

This shows, for each company in the environment, every table with the number of records in each and allocated database sizes.

Business Central “Table Information” page showing table record counts and database size by company.

Field

The Field Page displays each field and its properties. It also shows the relationship between fields.

Business Central “Field” page showing field properties and relationships used to understand table schema.

Page Metadata

This displays all the pages within the environment with additional information. The ribbon, Run Object option can be used to open that page.

Business Central “Page Metadata” list page showing page objects and the Run Object action to open a page.

Page Inspection

In addition to the above lists, on each page you have the ability to see, normally hidden, table and field information.

From any Page choose the question mark in the top right corner, choose Help & Support, and then choose Inspect pages and data or click Ctrl + Alt + F1 to open Page Inspection. This displays the Page name, its Id and Type alongside the table it is based on. It also displays all the fields the page has access with the extensions responsible for those fields.

Business Central “Page Inspection” pane showing page name/type, source table, fields, and extensions providing those fields.

Clicking Table View will open the raw table data for read-only access. For larger tables, this can take a time to open and impact system performance.

For more information click here: Inspecting Pages in Business Central (Microsoft Learn)