NAV

State of .NET Affairs

  • Reading time:17 mins read

I said a word or two about progress last week. Apparently, VS Code is not the only place where we take a small step back to be able to make a huge leap forward; .NET might seem like another one.

You know it, right? You know that if you want to run your .NET code in D365 for Financials, you are out of luck, and you do know that this applies to as much to Microsoft .NET Framework out-of-the-box types as it does to your own, custom-built .NET assemblies. If you don’t know that yet, then let me bring you up to date: In your D365 apps built on Extensions “v2” technology, you won’t be able to use anything .NET; you simply won’t be able to compile AL code that includes a DotNet variable declaration.

This is neither fake news, nor is it news per se. It has been known at least since October last year when Microsoft first presented AL Language extension for VS Code during Directions US in Phoenix. Soon after the VS Code session there was a round table (in all honesty, I have never seen a table, let alone a round one, at any of round table sessions at any conference) on the topic of .NET future, and the mood was grim. At first everyone thought it was a bad joke, then all held hopes high that Microsoft is simply “feeling the pulse” to see how the channel would react to such a disturbing change. But soon it became obvious that .NET interoperability is on its way to be gently ushered out of the (relevant) technology stack of NAV and that we should start getting ready for the day when it’s not there anymore.

So, what is the current state of .NET in NAV, what is the future of it, and what can you do about it?

Let’s take them one by one.

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Is Visual Studio Code really an improvement

  • Reading time:8 mins read

Progress often doesn’t look like progress at all when it first arrives.

When on July 3, 1886, Daimler Benz presented his first car, it had a 0.75 horse-power engine that could reach a top speed of 16 km/h. It was able to cover 45 km on a single fuel tank, and it could only take two passengers. Compared to best horse-driven carriages of the day, especially taking the availability of stuff you could use as fuel, this was hardly a progress. Horse-driven carriages bested this car on all fronts, and by large margins.

Imagine what the world would look like today should Daimler Benz heeded the naysayers and mockers of his day, and they were not in short supply.

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Web Services Black Belt: consuming NAV web services using pure C/AL

  • Reading time:4 mins read

MP900406779[1]Have you ever needed to connect to the Web services of one NAV instance from another one? If so, I bet that the approach was something like this: you created a .NET class where you defined a Web or Service reference to the target instance, and then you consumed that .NET class using .NET Framework interoperability. It was kind of clumsy, inflexible, but it worked.

How cool would it be if you could do something like this:

WITH WebService DO BEGIN
  CONNECT(‘http://localhost:7047/DynamicsNAV70/WS/CRONUS%20International%20Ltd/Page/Customer’);

  INIT;
  SETVALUE(‘Name’,’Test Customer’);
  SETVALUE(‘Blocked’,Cust.Blocked::Ship);
  SETVALUE(‘Credit_Limit_LCY’,10000);
  CREATE;

  MESSAGE(‘I just created Customer No. %1 in another NAV instance.’,GETVALUE(‘No’));
END;

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Benchmarking Results: NAV 2013 Outperforms All Previous Versions

  • Reading time:17 mins read

imageMarketing is nice as long as it matches the reality. With Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, Microsoft has promised a lot of improvements, but how well does NAV 2013 stand the reality test?

Apparently, outstandingly well.

Over the past two days, I have intensively tested NAV 2009 and NAV 2013 through a series of five different tests that measure different aspects of NAV data handling. My conclusion is clear: NAV 2013 is faster than any NAV you have ever seen, including the Classic client on the native database.

Continue reading to find out more about my findings and testing approach.

Continue ReadingBenchmarking Results: NAV 2013 Outperforms All Previous Versions

NAV Expert Panel Session Begins

  • Reading time:1 min read

imageI’m right now sitting in the virtual lobby of the NAV Expert Panel Session of the NAV day of the Decisions Spring 2012 conference. The panel features three MVPs, three book authors, and established members of the NAV community: Eric Wauters, Matt Traxinger, Steven Renders, Brent Fisher and myself.

With Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 beta out and a lot of partners having laid their hands on it, I assume the discussion will develop around NAV 2013 topics.

I don’t know how much time I’ll have during the session, because I’ll probably be busy answering questions, but I’ll be tweeting live from the session, so if you don’t have an opportunity to join the conference, you can still stay in the loop by following me at @vjekob, or follow the conference hashtag #msdwdecisions.

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Decisions Spring 2013 Kicking-off Next Week

  • Reading time:1 min read

imageMake sure not to miss Decisions, the virtual conference about Microsoft Dynamics, by MSDynamicsWorld.com. It’s starting next Monday, and I hope you already have it in your calendar. It’s a four day conference, a day per Dynamics flavor (SL is the only one not being served). The best of all – it’s free! Be there.

The Microsoft Dynamics NAV day is on Wednesday, June 20, and it’s featuring a program manager from Microsoft, three MVPs, (at least) three book authors, and a team of seasoned professionals in a series of interesting presentations.

Just like the previous years, I’ll be speaking there myself, and if you would like to join me for an excursion into the world beyond ERP, where several disruptive trends are shaping the future of the IT, and consequently the ERP. I’ll take an angle at the challenges the present and the future bring, and how Microsoft Dynamics NAV faces them, copes with them, and plays along. I promise it’ll be time well spent.

The conference is virtual, so you can attend it in your slippers, I won’t mind. See you in the cloud!

Continue ReadingDecisions Spring 2013 Kicking-off Next Week

Microsoft releases Sure Step 2012

  • Reading time:9 mins read

imageA couple of days ago, at a Sure Step 2010 training at Sundsgården, Helsingborg, Sweden, while students were preparing to take the exam, one of the students asks me where she can download Sure Step 2010. I give her the link, but she tells me: “No, that’s Sure Step 2012, I’d like to download 2010”.

That came as a surprise. “No way” – I say – “It hasn’t yet been released.”

Or has it?

And then I check, and almost can’t believe it – it’s really there. I completely missed the tweets, the Facebook announcement, the LinkedIn discussions. It seems that I’m not particularly social nowadays. A quick check of Twitter shows me that there wasn’t too much buzz around it, and most of the blogosphere simply redelivers the same content, which either comes from the official announcement (which I also missed Smile) or from whoever blogged first.

Instead of giving a simple “excited” redelivery of the announcement, here’s my take on Sure Step 2012, what’s new, what’s not new (both sadly and thankfully).

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Status of Stratus, T-1 month

  • Reading time:2 mins read

imageThe summer was hot in this part of the world, and Stratus only helped keep the heat up. We were not only snorkeling through the summer, we did a lot of work to keep up with our goal of going live in September, and we are still on track. So far so good.

Over the past two months, we have done the following:

  • Signed up 100+ companies for test drive
  • Reached 60+ countries
  • Signed a series of contracts with partner companies, including NDAs, MOUs and final agreements
  • Started several pilots with telecoms in Europe and Latin America
  • Demoed Stratus at a number of events, in Europe, United States and New Zealand
Continue ReadingStatus of Stratus, T-1 month

Status of Stratus

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Stratus - an actual screenshot of the Role CenterI’ve been asked too many times why I am not blogging more about Stratus, the web client for NAV developed by my company. People really want to know about it, and I am really keeping it far too silent.

Let’s change that. Instead of sending a ridiculous amount of e-mails every day, I’ll just keep you all posted through this blog.

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NAV TechDays 2011 in Antwerp, Belgium

  • Reading time:2 mins read

imageIf you are a follower of Mibuso.com you may already know that they are organizing NAV TechDays in Antwerp, Belgium, on September 29 and 30, a conference dedicated to all NAV developers, solution architects and technical folks in general. The content will be strictly technical, and speaker list includes a lot of Who’s Who of NAV folks including Michael Nielsen and Freddy Kristiansen, and MVPs including Eric Wauters, Jörg Stryk, and me.

It will be two days full of exciting technical sessions, mostly discussing the upcoming NAV 7 release, Cloud computing, integration and extensibility of NAV through .NET and web services, and development in general.

I hoped to deliver a session about .NET interoperability, but Microsoft folks seem to have reserved it for themselves, so I’ll deliver a still nice session about testability features and how to use them to customize NAV bug-free.

If by now you are not in the “where do I click to register” mood, then let me know that if you register by June 30, you may win one of the two iPad 2 devices that nice folks at Mibuso.com are giving away to two lucky participants.

Ah, ok, now we are talking business Smile Here’s the link: http://www.navtechdays.com/2011/registration.asp

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