Interop

When you spend more time in C# than C/AL, and you still tell yourself and the world around you that you are developing for NAV, then this post is for you. I already wrote a three-article series about “DLL hell” and how to resolve it, and in my last post in the series (…

If you are developing .NET assemblies for use with NAV, then sooner or later you’ll figure out that the new database deployment of add-ins in NAV 2016 is broken. I’ve just suffered through medieval torture of attempting to have my NAV forget about a database-deployed assembly.

[Update, February 8, 2016: there is a new version of code from this post. Please check https://vjeko.com/dynamically-loading-assemblies-at-runtime ] Okay here we go. In this post I deliver the promised code that handles automatic deployment of all your assemblies to client and server, as needed.

Deploying .NET assemblies to clients and servers in need is no simple affair. In my last post I have explained the problem, and announced the solution. As promised, in this post I bring you the solution. To be fully honest, this post only brings the conceptual solution, just a little brain game for you to train your .NET brain muscles a bit.

Let me tell you right away if you need to read this post at all. If you never wrote a single .NET class library intended to be used as a .NET interoperability assembly from C/AL, or if you never ever deployed a .dll file into the Add-ins folder of either Service or RoleTailored Client, then you probably don’t want to read this post.

Yesterday, as a part of Microsoft’s Road To Repeatability program, I delivered a live meeting session about server extensibility in NAV in which I focused on certain areas of .NET Interoperability and Web Services that in my opinion align well with the R2R message.

And yes, I almost forgot… Somebody (sorry, I didn’t catch the name) asked me to put my life hack on the blog as well, so here it is. For all of you who were not there, I use this as a template for declaring .NET variables – until Microsoft provides means to declare them in a simpler ways. Inline, anyone?

Thanks to everybody who attended my session today at NAV TechDays 2014 in Antwerp. As promised, here are the goodies from the session. I’ve simply taken the objects and I deliver them here with no explanations or comments – when Luc publishes the sessions and the slide decks on Mibuso, you’ll be able to figure out what’s what.

So, NAV TechDays 2014 have started, again, with the pre-conference sessions that were all sold out and packed full. Today I had an extraordinary pleasure to teach the advanced .NET Interoperability concepts to 15 people that came from all over the world, from Brazil to Australia.

Even though my blog queue has a lot of far more interesting todo entries waiting for their prime time, on my short flight to the Directions EMEA conference in Poznań, instead of dozing away or blank-staring through the window, I’ve decided to introduce the…