How to find references to a field in SQL backend

This query will give you a good list of reference on a particular field. You can find all references to it from processes and screens. This requires you to have a SQL backend and a studio to query the database. Replace 'APPLICATIONS.ID' with name of the field you want to find reference.

declare @fieldName as varchar(20) = 'APPLICATIONS.ID'
SELECT PROCESS_NAME as 'Process ID', PROCESS_TYPE as 'Process Type', PROCESS_DIRECT_ACCESS_NAME as 'UI Mnemonic' from PRCS_DEF A left JOIN PRCS_CTL B
ON A.PROCESS_NAME = B.PROCESS_MNEMONIC
where PROCESS_DATA_ELEMENTS like '%'+@fieldName+'%' or
PROCESS_DEMAND_ELEMENTS like '%'+@fieldName+'%' or PROCESS_DEMAND_POINTERS like '%'+@fieldName+'%'
ORDER BY PROCESS_DIRECT_ACCESS_NAME DESC, PROCESS_TYPE 

The result would look something like this:

Using ESEARCH to find hidden process references

Colleague Studio is a very user friendly tool that can do many things with simple mouse clicks. However, it's not perfect, and sometimes it does not do what it says it does 100% to completion. Let's take "Show Reference" for example. Colleague Studio will show you a partial list of processes that reference a particular process. If you still have access to the terminal in Desktop UI, using ESEARCH command can help in these kinds of research.

We will look at one of the Ellucian's delivered subroutine, S.CHECK.IF.WITHDRAWN, for this example. When checking for references in Colleague Studio, the list looks like this:

Now that I know this subroutine is mainly called in ST, I can go to the terminal and check for the complete list.

The above screen shows the usage of ESEARCH. You specify the folder/category of processes you want to search for. The above searches for UI/Webadvisor forms in ST. After the search, the result is saved in a savedlist named DTP. When you open DTP up, either in the terminal or in UI using SLED, you will see the more complete list of UI/Webadvisor forms that reference S.CHECK.IF.WITHDRAWN in ST.

Looking at the result, we can see more processes that reference S.CHECK.IF.WITHDRAWN than what Colleague Studio provides. I have found that Colleague doesn't not maintain references to custom processes very well, so ESEARCH is a good way to double-check. You can search for processes in corresponding applications:

appl.SUBROUTINES -> appl subroutines

appl.SOUCE -> appl screens

All of this requires you to have access to the terminal, of course. You can do a similar search using the window explorer on the Colleague file server, but that takes way longer for me.