al2dbml 0.1.0

Convert compiled Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central AL packages (.app) into DBML schemas.

al2dbml

al2dbml is a small Python CLI that converts a compiled Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central AL package (.app) into a DBML schema you can paste straight into dbdiagram.io or dbdocs.io. The pipeline reads SymbolReference.json from the .app archive (tolerating AL's 40-byte header), normalises tables, extensions, enums, and TableRelations, and emits one valid DBML document with Table, Ref, Enum, and TableGroup sections.

Install

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Python 3.10+ is required. The runtime depends only on click and pydbml.

Quickstart

al2dbml MyApp.app -o schema.dbml

Drop schema.dbml into https://dbdiagram.io. Without -o, the DBML is streamed to stdout so you can pipe it elsewhere.

al2dbml MyApp.app | less

Grouping

By default tables are bucketed into TableGroups by their first whitespace-separated word, dropping any bucket smaller than two tables (so Sales Header + Sales Line become group Sales, while a lone Customer stays ungrouped).

# Auto grouping (default)
al2dbml MyApp.app -o schema.dbml

# Explicit rules; the value is NAME=PATTERN[,PATTERN...] and -g is repeatable
al2dbml MyApp.app -g "Documents=Sales*,Purch*" -g "Master=Customer,Vendor,Item"

# Disable grouping entirely
al2dbml MyApp.app --no-groups

# Keep singleton groups too
al2dbml MyApp.app --min-group-size 1

--no-auto-groups switches off the first-word fallback so only your explicit -g rules apply.

TableExtensions

Extensions are merged into their target tables by default. Use --no-merge-extensions to emit them as separate <Target> (Extension) tables instead.

Public Python API

from al2dbml import Generator, generate, GroupingConfig

# One-shot helper
dbml = generate("MyApp.app", output_path="schema.dbml")

# Or step-by-step for custom grouping
gen = Generator.from_app(
    "MyApp.app",
    grouping=GroupingConfig(rules={"Documents": ["Sales*", "Purch*"]}),
)
print(gen.dbml())

Limitations (0.1.0)

• FlowFields are treated as regular fields — the underlying CalcFormula is not interpreted.
• Obsolete fields are emitted alongside active ones; no filtering by ObsoleteState.
• Multi-field primary keys are represented as multiple [pk] flags rather than a composite index, matching DBML's single-PK convention.
• Cross-package references (table relations that point to a table outside the current .app) are preserved as notes on the source column, since the target table is not present in the diagram.
• Complex IF (...) ... ELSE ... conditional TableRelation expressions fall back to a note rather than a fully-modeled reference.

Development

python -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/pytest -q
.venv/bin/ruff check .