database problems when adding new fields to purchtable

Hi there,

I added 3 new fields to purchtable last week. I used an account with administrator previledges. I made sure there were no users on the system and synchronised the table.

When a warehouse guy with restricted access got some error messages regarding the new field, I asked that all users re-start their client. Still problem persisted. Then we restarted the AOS. Still problem. Then restarted the citrix server one by one as different users were on different servers. It seemed to solve the problem. Then suddenly there was a major problem that intercompany purchase orders could not be raised in the system because intercompany suppliers in UK cannot be selected. We found that the data in the Endpoint table was all wiped off. This is the AIF(application interface framework) table that connects AUS to UK. We had to reenter all the data for UK suppliers who are intercompany suppliers in this table. Now the intercompany orders with UK are working. I am sure that this has something to do with the changes I made to purchtable though I do not know what.

Can someone tell me what steps to follow and what to watch out for, when making changes to major tables like purchtable?

Thanks a lot

Uma

I am not a developer, but the obvious one is to make changes in a development environment, deploy to test, test and once happy deploy to live.