Hint: this is a post for developers, and mostly junior developers, those who are still learning how to code properly. I know, I promised not to blog about stuff like this, but I simply couldn’t help this time.
A friend of mine has asked me for help.
“There is this C/AL function I had to rewrite, now I end up with 106 BEGINs, and only 105 ENDs. Do you have any idea how to find where this missing END belongs?”
[Updated]
I had to update this post a little bit, see below for the details, but the killer feature had to go 🙁
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Remeber that tool “Automated Version Management” that I published here and on Mibuso five months ago? It has just got an update: version 2.0.
I’ve just got a call for help from a partner, about their customer who has decided to move from basic inventory management to full-scale warehouse management system. The question was how to post the opening balances for existing inventory quantities in flat locations to warehouse-managed ones.
I thought this might deserve a quick blog post, you can never know when someone else would want to do the same thing.
A few days back, while prototyping a new solution for a customer, one of the key users said: “But in our old software it didn’t work like that.” I was about to try to explain why the change, but then the user’s boss said:
– We aren’t implementing a new solution so that everything can stay the way it was.
How often does it happen to you that your customers say to you a similar thing: “But in our old system…”? What do you say to them? How do you approach change when your consultant proposes a new way of doing things, or a new approach to a common problem?
A blog reader has asked me for help about an allegedly strange behavior of items with serial number tracking. They had a customer who had serial number tracking switched on for an item with FIFO costing method. Whenever they posted a sales transaction, they chose the serial number manually. Then they noticed a puzzling behavior.
No matter the specification of the serial number on the sales lines, Microsoft Dynamics NAV seemed to be closing the item entries according to FIFO method. This effectively allowed a serial number to be sold twice (or more). They called for help.
I hate it when I don’t have time to blog. I’d like if I could tell you what I’ve been doing, but let’s leave it at this: I am enjoying my vacation, away from my office, my job, my projects, my customers, my partners, and obviously – my blog. You should take a vacation, too – great stuff!
Another thing I hate is to start anything with “I hate”. So, let’s switch the tone.
I love undocumented features. They afford you some brag time with your friends and colleagues. I’ve just found about a great undocumented feature in Microsoft Dynamics NAV: import objects from a .FBK backup (found on Plataan Knowledge Blog). If you just need the objects, there is no need to restore the whole database. Nice one!
(I already see myself using this – after the vacation, of course…)
A new version of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology was released yesterday and is available for download to all Microsoft Dynamics partners enrolled in a service plan. If you were a partner, and thought you had no reason to enroll in one before, now there is a compelling reason to do so. This version brings so many improvements over the previous one that it is really worth it.
I promised to myself not to post technical stuff on this blog. But as Seth Godin said not that long ago, never’s not such a long time. And also, why shouldn’t I share a piece of useful advice if I have it. So here it goes.
Have you ever started a lengthy NAV batch job, and then wondered how much longer it is really going to take? Me too.
I never really expected that my post about my laptop outperforming an 8-headed dragon of a server would draw that much attention: record number of first-day reads of any blog post on my blog ever (134), and record number of comments (11 comments, by 5 people, me included). Not a big deal, but I believe you deserve a conclusion, to know how it all ended.
To be honest, it didn’t.
Never trust the customer 🙂 We were sure that the server had last service packs applied, that’s the first that we asked of the customer IT, and got a definite answer that “But, of course!”. So we didn’t really think this might be an issue. Then we noticed that SQL Server build number was 1399, while my laptop was running 3042. This reads: customer’s top-notch server is still on SQL Server 2005 RTM, my laptop is on SP2. There may hide the culprit.
So – a lesson learned: check the versions yourself, check them first, no matter what they say to you.
BUT STILL – did SP2 really bring such a huge performance improvement? Any experiences anyone? I’ve found out that there are some improvements with performance, but on such a huge scale? I mean, it is still three times faster on four times weaker hardware. This should call for a 12-fold improvement in certain operations, quite a feat 🙂
I look forward to this evening, when we have SP2 upgrade scheduled – I really can’t wait to see if this helps. I hope so, otherwise, we don’t need technical consultants on this project – we need exorcists!