I just updated the Edge 540 beta software today and had to approve the installation of the ‘category alias database’.
I’m normally keen to have a go at guessing what things mean but have to admit that this one has flummoxed me. And, so it seems, Google as well who couldn’t help.
Any thoughts or Category Alias Database Experts out there? I thought it had something to do with sub-sport categories but that didn’t warrant an entire database so I’m guessing it’s something to do with maps.
Last Updated on 4 October 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
Another wild guess: something about trail categories. Those would tend to be region specific and the Garmin software wants to have some uniform “language”? You’d certainly expect them to be pre-unified off device where the OSM extracts are converted into garmin map format, but perhaps there are other sources (trailforks?) to unify, or maybe it’s one of those outdoor division vs fitness division things where outdoor is in charge of the OSM and prefers to keep local categories, while fitness needs global categorization.
Beats me, but google seems to indicate it’s not really new, there was a reference to a 1040 bugfix from 2 years ago that addressed “category alias database failed to load”.
The category alias database contains the translations and other metadata of the POIs that you can search for on the device. The data is stored in a SQLite database file that you can inspect with a tool like DB Browser for SQLite. The database file is stored in the Garmin\SQL\internal folder.
This folder contains other SQLite database files as well btw, like climbpro data and metadata about the maps that can be downloaded with the on device Map Manager.