ODBC, JDBC, .NET Data Provider, Character Based Tools, and OpenROAD rely on the Ingres data dictionary to provide meta data information about tables, views, procedures and other Ingres objects. This information is exposed in a set of tables and views called the Ingres Standard Catalogs. The Character Based Tools and OpenROAD rely on a second set of Catalogs called the Extended Catalogs. The Extended Catalogs are used to store metadata information about that store in the Report Writer object, Query By Forms objects, and OpenROAD Workbench objects such as OpenROAD application objects, OpenROAD bitmap objects, and OpenROAD stored string objects.

The Ingres Standard Catalogs are defined in Standard Catalogs for All Databases. The Ingres Extended Catalogs are defined in Organization of Extended System Catalogs. When OpenROAD makes a connection to the Ingres or Enterprise Access, a check is made to ensure that the Ingres Standard Catalogs and Ingres Extended Catalogs are present. If the Ingres Extended Catalogs are not present, the connection fails. If II_DICTIONARY_OK is set to TRUE, the check for the presence of the Ingres Extended Catalogs is disabled and the connection to the target DBMS is allowed to proceed.