Business Central Development

Early versions of SQL Server option for Microsoft Dynamics NAV (then called Navision) didn’t scale up as high as one would expect. Although SQL Server itself could scale up to thousands and tens of thousands of concurrent users, running a production environment of an ERP system is way different from running generic lab tests.

One of the choices a customer interested in Microsoft Dynamics NAV must definitely make is the choice of the database platform. With NAV, there are two possible options: so called native database server, which is not really officially called that (the official name is Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server), and Microsoft SQL Server.

In Croatia, most of roads resemble battlefields. They are so full of holes and patches from all kinds of repairs over time, that they have to re-pave them every five years or so. It is an awful waste of taxpayer’s money, and makes you wish for the world of Jennifer Government to come be.

Development is an important phase of implementation of a highly-customizable ERP system, such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and that’s why I put a lot of emphasis on development, specifically on coding part of it. I’ve tried to cover a few do’s and don’ts of coding, but so far I’ve left one of my favorite clay pigeons out: hardcoding.

When I posted my last relevant post on this blog, I’ve got a comment from infonote (a visitor) how bad it was that Microsoft Dynamics NAV can’t use a versioning system. Well, as the matter of fact, it can. One of the nice things in NAV is that at any given moment, the development environment is just a Shift+F12 away.

Few days ago, when I wrote about coding, I didn’t have a slightest idea that at the same time, at the completely opposite part of the globe, Dave was blogging almost about the same thing . It is interesting to know that I am not the only one out there actually worying about code, and how it looks like.

Code is boring. It is geeky. And it’s ugly, too. In C/AL it is especially ugly. While contemporary development tools come with all sort of gizmos which make coding easier, such as color-coding, auto-completion, refactoring, etc., C/AL editor seems like having awaken from a thousand-year sleep.

Today I got a comment from another soul out there, spending their time blogging about Microsoft Dynamics NAV. I’ve immediately put the link to my blogroll, and it really deserves it, because it is the best blog on the topic I’ve seen so far.

There is only one way to abort a user action in Microsoft Dynamics NAV: by using the ERROR function. This function essentially stops the execution of all code, and prevents completion of the user action, whatever such action might be. One of typical situations where ERROR is used to prevent user action is during validation of a new value in a field.

I love unsolvable problems. I simply do. I had one a few days ago in the office, and I solved it. So, the problem went like this. A discussion has been raised among developers about whether it would be possible to display a blank form over a populated table, where user would be able to immediately…