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Format overview

This is a high-level orientation map. The detailed specification is in SPECIFICATION.md, and the empirical notebook is in re/NOTES.md.

Three layers​

A .qbw file is an onion:

+-------------------------------------------+
|  QuickBooks business layer                |
|  (invoices, transactions, customers, ...) |
|  -- parsed by `openqbw` crate             |
+-------------------------------------------+
|  SA17 page-store catalog                  |
|  (SYSTABLE, SYSCOLUMN, SYSINDEX, ...)     |
|  -- parsed by `openqbw` crate             |
+-------------------------------------------+
|  SA17 raw page store + AP obfuscation     |
|  (4096-byte pages, slot directories)      |
|  -- parsed by `opensqlany` crate          |
+-------------------------------------------+

Layer 1: raw page store​

Provided by OpenSQLAnywhere. The file is divided into 4096-byte pages. Each page has a trailer at offset 0xFF0..0xFFF that includes a CRC and a one-byte page type (A alloc, E extent, C catalog, I index, ...).

QuickBooks applies an additive-progression cipher on top: the plaintext page byte at offset i in block b is `obfuscated[i]

  • ap_table[b][i]. The ApModelinopensqlany` learns the per-block additive table from the known-plaintext trailer.

Layer 2: SA17 catalog​

SQL Anywhere uses on-page system tables (SYSTABLE, SYSCOLUMN, SYSINDEX, SYSOBJECT) instead of a separate metadata file. OpenQBW parses these to enumerate user tables and their columns.

Empirical finding (C.57): all index root pages cluster in a separate dbspace extent at file end, not adjacent to their owning tables. This means SYSINDEX can validate index ownership at the row level but not page-to-table attribution at the page level.

Layer 3: QuickBooks business layer​

QuickBooks stores each business object (invoice, line item, ...) as a row in an abmc_* table. OpenQBW's lineitem.rs and transaction_header.rs modules know the row layouts for the key tables.

Page-to-table attribution is handled by page_attribution.rs (SYSTABLE-driven) with attribution_schema.rs and attribution_content.rs as schema-driven and content-signature validators respectively. The combined width-band attribution is the production answer (see WP-6Z.2).

Where to read the code​

  • crates/openqbw/src/lib.rs -- top-level re-exports
  • crates/openqbw/src/lineitem.rs -- invoice line-item record
  • crates/openqbw/src/transaction_header.rs -- transaction header
  • crates/openqbw/src/page_attribution.rs -- page-to-table map
  • crates/openqbw/src/sysindex.rs -- index catalog
  • crates/openqbw-cli/src/main.rs -- the CLI front-end