The Sage 100 Business Object Interface (BOI): what it is and when you need it

ODBC or BOI?

Writing directly to the data files, or to the SQL tables on Premium, skips the business logic and is not supported by Sage.

What BOI requires

• Windows with the Sage 100 workstation installed. The COM entry point is ProvideX.Script. If NewObject fails with error 200, the BOI components are usually not registered on that machine; run the Sage 100 workstation setup there.
• Matching bitness. Your process must match the installed Sage 100 components. Sage 100 2026 is 64-bit only.
• A Sage 100 user whose role allows the tasks you call. Plan for a connected BOI session to take a user license seat; older community answers say so, confirm it on your version.
• Documentation lives in the "File Layouts and Program Information" section of Sage 100 help. It lists every business object, its fields and their types. Sage support does not debug BOI programs, so budget for your own testing.

The sequence every BOI program follows

1. Create ProvideX.Script and call Init with the path to MAS90\Home.
2. Create the session: NewObject("SY_Session"), then nSetUser, nSetCompany, nSetDate and nSetModule.
3. Tell the session which task you run: nSetProgram(nLookupTask("SO_SalesOrder_ui")). The security check uses this task.
4. Create the business object with the session: NewObject("SO_SalesOrder_bus", session).
5. Set the key, set values, write. Methods starting with n return a number: 1 is success, 0 is failure. After a failure, read sLastErrorMsg on the same object.
6. Drop the objects and the session when you finish, or the license seat stays taken.

Example: create a sales order from Python

This follows the VBScript and C# pattern from the Sage community and Stack Overflow answers listed below, written for Python with pywin32. Test it against a copy of the company before you point it at live data.

import win32com.client

HOME = r"C:\Sage\Sage 100 Standard\MAS90\Home"

px = win32com.client.Dispatch("ProvideX.Script")
px.Init(HOME)
ss = px.NewObject("SY_Session")

def ok(ret, obj):
    if ret != 1:
        raise RuntimeError(obj.sLastErrorMsg)

ok(ss.nSetUser("APIUSER", "secret"), ss)
ok(ss.nSetCompany("ABC"), ss)
ok(ss.nSetDate("S/O", "09272026"), ss)       # MMDDYYYY
ok(ss.nSetModule("S/O"), ss)
ok(ss.nSetProgram(ss.nLookupTask("SO_SalesOrder_ui")), ss)

so = px.NewObject("SO_SalesOrder_bus", ss)
try:
    ok(so.nSetKeyValue("SalesOrderNo$", "0001043"), so)
    ok(so.nSetKey(), so)
    ok(so.nSetValue("ARDivisionNo$", "01"), so)
    ok(so.nSetValue("CustomerNo$", "AVNET"), so)
    ok(so.nSetValue("CustomerPONo$", "SHOP-5512"), so)

    lines = so.oLines
    ok(lines.nAddLine(), lines)
    ok(lines.nSetValue("ItemCode$", "1001-HON-H252"), lines)
    ok(lines.nSetValue("QuantityOrdered", 4), lines)
    ok(lines.nWrite(), lines)

    ok(so.nWrite(), so)
finally:
    so.DropObject()
    ss.nCleanup()
    ss.DropObject()

• String fields take a $ suffix in nSetValue ("CustomerNo$"); numeric fields do not ("QuantityOrdered").
• Write the lines, then the header. Nothing is saved until the header nWrite succeeds.
• Check sLastErrorMsg on the object that failed. A line error is on oLines, not on the header.
• Use your own reference, such as the web order number in CustomerPONo, to find an order again if your program stops between the write and its log entry. That prevents duplicate orders on retry.

Sources: Sage 100 help: BOI FAQs, Sage community: sales order code, Stack Overflow: BOI from C# and error 200, Stack Overflow: where BOI is documented.