What purpose does a .DDF file have?

Hey can someone tell me what the Field, File and Index .ddf file开发者_Go百科s do in pervasive. Do they have to changed or be updated when a table definition changes? Any insight would be GREATLY appreciated.

Cheers.

FILE.DDF links the underlying Btrieve Data files to a logical table name.
FIELD.DDF uses the File Id from FILE.DDF to define all of the fields including offsets, data types, etc for each table.
INDEX.DDF defines the indexes on the fields in FIELD.DDF.
They are the field information meta date used by PSQL to access the data files in a relation access method (ODBC, OLEDB, ADO.NET, etc).
They do have to be changed if the underlying data file is changed through Btrieve. If the table definition changes through SQL (like ALTER TABLE statements), the Pervasive Control Center, DTI (Distributed Tuning Interface), DTO (Distributed Tuning Object), PDAC, ActiveX, or DDF Builder then the DDFs are updated automatically.