Coding

Transaction Integrity with Connected Systems

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Broken pencilWith .NET Interoperability around, it’s very likely you’ll be synchronously calling external web services from C/AL, to exchange data. I won’t go into discussing whether or not this kind of architecture is good (my own position is that it isn’t), you may end up having situations where your C/AL code simply makes a synchronous call to external systems, such as web services.

Any external call is an expected point of failure. An important question you must always have in mind when calling external functions is transaction integrity. When writing code that targets only NAV, the structure of code is largely irrelevant, as long as you are not using COMMITs (which is another thing you should avoid at all costs). However, as soon as you introduce external calls, the structure becomes critically relevant. Critically relevant.

I’ve talked about this during my 2012 NAV TechDays session, and I promised I’d blog about it – so, here it goes.

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10 reasons that make design absolutely necessary

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Unfinished buildings, by net_efekt (on Flickr)Design is one of a kind. Other phases in Sure Step are understood and accepted as good and necessary. But design, do we really do that? Is it really necessary? Who’s going to pay for it? Does the customer really need all those documents? Instead of writing documents, you could have it developed in the same, or less time. And so on and so forth.

As a matter of fact, if you asked me to pick one single most important phase in a Sure Step project, then it’s the design. No second thoughts here, whatsoever.

Here I list the ten most important reasons that I believe make design absolutely indispensable.

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NeverENDing story

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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?”

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WinDays 2008: Aftermath

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WinDays 2008 are over. Somehow, this conference has become a milestone, in Croatian ICT community, in Microsoft community, even in my life. I met a friend there, one of those I only meet there, and realized just how quickly the year turned. Obviously, I contemplated too much, and partied too little, something to really get worried about.

Anyway, the presentations I delivered made me think about the future of this blog. It started pretty randomly, as a place where I simply dumped anything that crossed my mind, so you had all sorts of content, from programming, to development, to functionality, to theory. When I look at my blog to-do list, there is even more chaos to it, with topics ranging from SQL optimization all the way to business process reengineering. I realized I need more focus. (more…)

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