Monthly Archives: October 2016

I had a dream: codeunit references

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  • Reading time:10 mins read

Polymorphism is a great thing. .NET, Java, C++ and other folks have enjoyed its benefits for a long time, some more than a quarter century already. Meanwhile, we, the meager C/AL bunch, can only dream about it and draft our little patterns that all come short of it if only by a tiny bit.

Sometimes it feels like writing code with a chalk on a blackboard. There may be no end to your imagination, but there is a very real end to what the board can do for you.

But dream we can. And let me have another dream.

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Gentlemen’s agreement pattern, or handling the “Handled” pattern

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  • Reading time:13 mins read

I’ve delved deep into design patterns story with my last two blog posts, but I am far from over. The patterns I discussed are the ones we could use up until NAV 2015 (we can still use them, of course!) but some more robust loose coupling (excuse the near-oxymoron) can be achieved with what NAV 2016 brought along: events.

It’s the “Handled” pattern. This pattern comes from Thomas Hejlsberg, a chief architect and CTO of Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and was first described by Mark Brummel on his blog. It’s a powerful loose-coupling pattern that successfully addresses the shortcomings of all design patterns I discussed earlier. I would prefer calling this pattern Event Façade rather than “Handled”, but it’s not my baby to christen.

Let’s take a look.

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TempBlob Façade: a pattern proposition

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  • Reading time:8 mins read

Achieving some kind of polymorphism in C/AL has always been a problem. The fact that true polymorphism with pure C/AL is outright impossible has not stopped the more stubborn of us to at least give it a try. That’s how some cool patterns emerged.

The façade pattern has been evangelized by Gary Winter so eagerly that he couldn’t find time to formally describe it. The other pattern that comes close is the variant façade pattern. It was formally described at the patterns Wiki page, but – to the best of my knowledge – was first figured out by Arend-Jan Kauffmann.

These two patterns can go a long way. No, they are not coming anywhere near true polymorphism, but will achieve some cool loose binding when you need it.

In my practice, I took a step further, and I think it’s about time I share it. Let’s see if it works for you as well as it did for me.

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