Navision - VB application integration

RashME

We have just started Navision in integration with a hospital management software which is in VB. Is it possible to code posting groups in VB/VB.net instead of navision. Our requirement is actually like this, we want to be able to use the finance module of Navision without opening the application. That is, whenever a transaction happens in our Hospital Management software, it should automatically affect chart of accounts in Navision online without opening the application

Suggestion and comments please!!

DenSter

No you don't want to go that route. There is just too much business logic that would have to recreate to keep data consistent. If you want to integrate, the best practice is to populate journals along the way and fire off the Navision posting routines through a NAS. NAS (or Navision Application Server) is a Navision client that runs without user interface as a Windows Service. If you have access to a Navision product CD, you should be able to find documentation on this in the Doc folder on disk 1.

I've been involved in a number of integrations with Navision using Message Queing, and I've found this to be the best method by far. I've also written one that reads and processes transactions from a linked table on SQL Server, which worked very well but that was tricky. Then you can also use ADO.

The same point applies to all of these methods though. You use the integration only to exchange data, and you let Navision functionality handle the posting.

kriki

DenSter wrote:

No you don't want to go that route. There is just too much business logic that would have to recreate to keep data consistent. If you want to integrate, the best practice is to populate journals along the way and fire off the Navision posting routines through a NAS.

Or even better:create a new table where VB puts the data. Then the NAS can populate the journal-tables with the help of VALIDATE's and then post it.
Also the journal-tables have a lot of business logic in them that is best used to make it easier.

DenSter

What I meant was to have a Navision process populate all Navision data (including Journals) and process all Navision business logic. If you'll notice I said 'somewhere along the way' and by that I did not mean for any outside process to populate any journals directly.

The best way that I know is to send XML messages into a message queue and have a queue monitor catch those messages and do what you need to do with them.

I don't like having any external program writing anything into 'my' Navision databases, that's like letting a stranger use your shower . For sure though, if you do let an external (external to Navision) process populate anything, it should be a staging table that a Navision process monitors. This process then would populate the right tables, using the right business logic.

jazzyjess

hahaha, that stranger using your shower part was funny....