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.
Policies are sacrosanct. Every company has them, and when implementing ERP systems policies do come in the way. That’s the way we do it ’round here since forever, is heard rather frequently, but a simple question why can leave a big question mark hang unanswered.
There was an experiment…
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. Anyway, as soon as they re-pave the roads, not a week usually passes before they come again, with jackhammers and heavy machinery of all sorts, and start drilling away, blocking the road in process and causing mass-frustration, just because some wacko has suddenly remembered that it would be nice idea to pass the optic cable underneath, or some valve started leaking.
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.
If you want me to define hardcoding, I’d probably put it something like this: hardcoding is the ugliest possible form of laziness, incompetence, ignorance, indifference, carelessness, or any combination of the five, which in short-term makes my toenails curl up, and long-term leads to poor and unmaintainable systems and unhappy customers.
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. When you are a single developer on your team or on a project, this keypress is your best friend. But if there are other people on your team pressing it with an agenda, then this keypress might as well be a combination made in hell.