SHOW REFERENCES / IMPACT

These commands provide broader reference tracking and impact analysis, helping you understand how changes propagate through a project.

Prerequisites

Both commands require a full catalog refresh:

REFRESH CATALOG FULL;

SHOW REFERENCES OF

Shows all references to and from a given element, combining both incoming and outgoing relationships.

Syntax:

SHOW REFERENCES OF <qualified-name>

Examples:

-- Find all references to/from an entity
SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.Customer;

-- Find all references to/from a microflow
SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.ACT_ProcessOrder;

-- Find all references to/from a page
SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.CustomerOverview;

CLI Usage

mxcli refs -p app.mpr Module.Customer

Difference from CALLERS/CALLEES

While SHOW CALLERS and SHOW CALLEES focus on the call graph direction, SHOW REFERENCES combines both directions into a single view. It shows every element that either references or is referenced by the target element.

SHOW IMPACT OF

Performs impact analysis on an element, showing what would be affected if you changed or removed it.

Syntax:

SHOW IMPACT OF <qualified-name>

Examples:

-- Analyze impact of changing an entity
SHOW IMPACT OF Sales.Customer;

-- Analyze impact before removing a microflow
SHOW IMPACT OF Sales.ACT_CalculateTotal;

-- Check impact before moving an element
SHOW IMPACT OF Sales.CustomerOverview;

CLI Usage

mxcli impact -p app.mpr Module.Customer

Use Cases

Pre-Change Impact Assessment

Before modifying an entity, check what would be affected:

-- What depends on the Customer entity?
SHOW IMPACT OF Sales.Customer;

-- Review results: pages, microflows, associations, access rules
-- Then decide if the change is safe to make

Before Moving Elements

Moving elements across modules changes their qualified name and can break references:

-- Check impact before moving
SHOW IMPACT OF OldModule.Customer;

-- If impact is acceptable, proceed
MOVE ENTITY OldModule.Customer TO NewModule;

Finding All Usages of an Enumeration

SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.OrderStatus;
-- Shows: entities with attributes of this type, microflows that use it, pages that display it

Dependency Mapping

Understand the full dependency web of a complex module:

SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.Order;
SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.OrderLine;
SHOW REFERENCES OF Sales.Order_Customer;