Some Info from Tech Ed

SPost29

What do you need to know to be ready for Nav 5.0:

I was at the Nav 5.0 preview in Boston. It looks like some exciting new possibilities are around the corner. They made a point of this being a preview and that much may change.

As far as what Knowledge you need for 5.0 (these are Microsoft's categories):

Nice to Have:
C# However you will not be writing Nav 5.0 application code in C#
when you compile your objects they will be converted to a C# assembly and stored on the 2nd tier
.Net Framework
Web Services /XML

Beneficial:
Internet information Server (IIS) the 2nd tier runs on IIS -know the administrative and installation aspects of this server

Must Have:
SQL 2005 mostly how to administer and SQL report writer In the 3 tier configuration Nav 5.0 will only run on SQL

C/AL - You will still be writing C/AL in a C/SIDE client


You can choose to still run Nav 5.0 as a 2 tier setup and use the native DB or SQL.
But to get the 3 tier benefits it will be only SQL

Nav 5.0 A very cool step forward

DenSter

The only C# you need is if you intend to do very advanced reporting services, or Biztalk orchestrations, or if you intend to write external apps in C# to communicate with Navision. As far as I know MSFT does not intend for any NAV developer to have to write anything in C# directly. C/AL will be compiled into managed assemblies from the C/AL editor, we will not see any C# code there.

Like you said though, this may still change. However, MSFT is making it very clear that they want the existing Navision partners to be able to work with NAV 5 right away without having to introduce new programming languages.

That the new client won't work on the native database server is new to me, are you sure that's the case?

SteveO

Yup it is indeed the case that if you wish to use the new client you must run on SQL. This is because it is going to run off of the middle tier (IIS) which is not available to native installations.

Same goes for WebServices.

ajhvdb

I find it difficult to translate 1 tear, 2 tear, etc. into my own language. Could you give some more info.

DenSter

1 tier = standalone. All data and logic is on one computer, and there is only one user. Word is a standalone app. You have the app installed on your computer, and you access one doc at a time.

2 tier = client/server for instance. In Navision's case, you have the data in one tier, and the business logic in the client tier. Data is transferred from the data layer into the client layer, where the business logic is.

3 tier: data in one tier, display in one tier (the client), and the business logic in a tier in between. Theoretically you could have each tier on a separate machine, making the app more scalable. In prectice we will see how well that works .

In Dutch: de eerste1 laag voor de data, de tweede laag voor de logica, en de derde laag voor het tonen van informatie.

johnson_alonso

Will Dynamics Nav 5.0 become the best solutions for the problems that old versions than NAV 5.0 encountering right now??
Will it only be an interesting name ? interesting coding name for example C#, C++, CCCP or anything else that actually will not, new server needs or anything else that only give improvement on the installation and coding but not have special features that other ERP system doesn't have.
I just want to inform that some of navision have failed to implement in the certain company because of its weakness for example, it needs add-on, it needs customizing and so on.
How the new one will affect the ERP system market ??


Rgds,
Johnson

ajhvdb

DenSter wrote:

In Dutch: de eerste1 laag voor de data, de tweede laag voor de logica, en de derde laag voor het tonen van informatie.

thx

Marije_Brummel

ajhvdb wrote:

I find it difficult to translate 1 tear, 2 tear, etc. into my own language. Could you give some more info

Send me an email and we'll have call when I am back in Holland.

Marije_Brummel

johnson alonso wrote:

Will Dynamics Nav 5.0 become the best solutions for the problems that old versions than NAV 5.0 encountering right now??
Will it only be an interesting name ? interesting coding name for example C#, C++, CCCP or anything else that actually will not, new server needs or anything else that only give improvement on the installation and coding but not have special features that other ERP system doesn't have.
I just want to inform that some of navision have failed to implement in the certain company because of its weakness for example, it needs add-on, it needs customizing and so on.
How the new one will affect the ERP system market ??


Rgds,
Johnson

The big thing everybody is talking about in the next release is the new client and the new 3tier structure.

All business logic stays in c/al, there are inprovements on e.g. costing, workflow etc.

In future you will still be needing add-ons and customisations. In fact, that is what makes our product so great and unique even compared to AX and GP.

Man I think I can write a book about this.

Anonymous

BlackTiger wrote:

Are you speaking about Navision? What wealnesses do you mean? Something like "I won't to buy BMW because it's white and wheels are not big enough!"? It's not a "weakness", it's stupidness and moronity.

What I want to tell you that is Mic. Dyn. Nav. 5.0 release will become a great version of Navision if it can show new functionalities that were not exists in the previous release and 99% bugs free guarantee. No more add-on needed let alone customisation. Because of customisation, some prospectus companies don't choose Navision and if they agree, they request 100% money back guarantee if implementation fails.
You must read about Steven Paul Jobs who has apple products like Mac OS, iMac, iPod, etc., do you know him? he said about apple's decadence is because of the product, everything are bulls**t. Don't become a neanderthal people.
I think developer existance is one of the navision sales challenge if developer itself solely offers customisation, add-on etc. but actually the developer's duty must be focused on report design, create XML port , how import file by creating button etc.., etc..
Developer's knowledge in marketing must be improved too. I always focus on what's new in the new version that can shift it to be a famous product rather than previous release just doing fix error, fix error and not focused on the technical and developer side only?
Will it erase all current add-ons..? The last choice is always add-on or customisation, if it's really really needed.
For me, to be a developer is not difficult, because I've created new forms, new buttons, new reports, etc, without reading navision development manual. the important in the development is the idea behind it like creating add-on.

Rgds,
Johnson

johnson_alonso

BlackTiger wrote:

Are you speaking about Navision? What wealnesses do you mean? Something like "I won't to buy BMW because it's white and wheels are not big enough!"? It's not a "weakness", it's stupidness and moronity.

It's different like you have said. It can't be like buying BMW, pal.
What I want to tell you that is Mic. Dyn. Nav. 5.0 release will become a great version of Navision if it can show new functionalities that were not exists in the previous release and 99% bugs free guarantee. No more add-on needed let alone customisation. Because of customisation, some prospectus companies don't choose Navision and if they agree, they request 100% money back guarantee if implementation fails.
You must read about Steven Paul Jobs who has apple products like Mac OS, iMac, iPod, etc., do you know him? he said about apple's decadence is because of the product, everything are bulls**t. Don't become a neanderthal people.
I think developer existance is one of the navision sales challenge if developer itself solely offers customisation, add-on etc. but actually the developer's duty must be focused on report design, create XML port , how import file by creating button etc.., etc..
Developer's knowledge in marketing must be improved too. I always focus on what's new in the new version that can shift it to be a famous product rather than previous release just doing fix error, fix error and not focused on the technical and developer side only?
Will it erase all current add-ons..? The last choice is always add-on or customisation, if it's really really needed.
For me, to be a developer is not difficult, because I've created new forms, new buttons, new reports, etc, without reading navision development manual. the important in the development is the idea behind it like creating add-on.

Rgds,
Johnson

bbrown

Products like Navision are dependent on the VAR channel or sales and support. VARs look for products that will drive additional revenues (read integration and development services). Changing Navision in a way that reduces these oppurtunities would make it less appealing to VARs. This would have a significant impact on the Navision support channel.

johnson_alonso

Black Tiger wrote:

I've seen a "result" of developers like you, many times... Especially after "without reading navision development manual"...

it's up to you to judge me like that, it seems that it need a fight to solve this situation. But I want to say that you are absolutely wrong if my result is not good in the development segment because you never see my development product. Indeed I read the manual but not focus. I am only see the exists coding, table, fields, forms, etc..relates to development

So, what I want to know about new NAV 5.0 is that it will solve the previous errors, it has had new functionalities (granules, modules, or something new business process or work flow) that they created in not only based on FAQs but based on the new industries business process researches that will exists in the future. Here Mark has given a good opening explanation..


rgds
Johnson

Marije_Brummel

johnson alonso wrote:

..No more add-on needed let alone customisation.

What do you mean by this? The Add-on program is one of the things that makes NAV unique, and will be continued in the future.

There are loads of add-on's avaliable with functionality that will never become available in standard NAV because of to small a market.

Miklos_Hollender

Does it mean that you could actually program Navision business logic in C# if you really wanted? Compiling them into assemblies which use the standard INSERT, VALIDATE etc. methods and then calling the assembly from C/AL?

Because if yes, that could mean some interesting possibilities. For example, programming in IronPython. Or, in the most powerful programming language ever invented Scheme. http://www.rivendell.ws/dot-scheme/ (The reason I call Scheme the most powerful programming language is that it lacks syntax, code is represented as hierarchical data structures, and code can be transformed by code just like XML, blurring the border between data and logic. For example, ( + 1 2 3) is a function call with three parameters (returning 6), while '(+ 1 2 3) is data (a list of four elements).

Marije_Brummel

I am not a classic programmer in languages like C++ or C#; I like programming in business logic more, But then again, this is al I've ever done. :oops:

I think there will be some checksum validation preventing you from changing the NAV behaviour, but this kind of details about the procuct will become more available in the comming months.

DenSter

johnson alonso wrote:

developer is not difficult, because I've created new forms, new buttons, new reports, etc, without reading navision development manual.

That is exactly the reason why projects that you are involved in get screwed up, because you don't know what you're doing. If you'd stop and leave the development part to developers and you concentrate on writing the specs that you think developers don't understand, maybe your life would be a lot easier. Just because the actual trick of opening an object in design mode is easy, does NOT make development an easy trick. Because it is so easy to open these objects, it is easy to screw things up, and people like you then blame the product rather than look at themselves and evaluate what they did to it.

DenSter

Miklos Hollender wrote:

Does it mean that you could actually program Navision business logic in C# if you really wanted? Compiling them into assemblies which use the standard INSERT, VALIDATE etc. methods and then calling the assembly from C/AL?

This is my personal guessing, so it i not based on what I know from MSFT...
If NAV 5 is managed .NET code, then there must be namespaces that include NAV business logic. If there are namespaces, then you must be able to include them in a .NET visual studio project (using system.net.dynamics.nav or something like that). If you can include them then you can write your own code using those namespaces.

I ran this by one of MS senior people and he simply said 'we cannot stop you guys fom finding those type of things, but they will not be supported'. This means that if you find a method called 'validate' and you spend 5000 developer hours using it in a very advanced web interface, then MS has the right to just change the whole method to a different name, with different parameters, take away overloads, do anything they want with it. Because as far as MS is concerned, those namespaces are for MS use only. They will not be intended for us to be used directly.

<edit>like I said before, this is my personal guessing, not coming from anything that I saw at MS</edit>

Miklos_Hollender

Okay, but that's not a problem. We wrap'em over in a codeunit within Navision and use that from without. Or wrap it over from the outside. Basically, there is a very natural way how Navision objects should map to .NET: Tables, Forms etc. must be classes and actual objects either instances or - more likely - subclasses. Fields as methods and stuff like validate or insert also methods. I think they don't really can do much unexpected things. Maybe a field accessor is a fieldname in one release and fieldnameSet in the next, but then we just change our wrapper class.

Besides, this is one of the reasons I meant Scheme and generally, functional programming. In Scheme, I'd probably write a function that takes a table and field name, and returns another function - a lambda function, or in C# terminology, an "anonymous delegate"[1] - that can validate that field, so the only thing to change would be the first function.

Footnotes:

[1] I just *love* when language designers redefine ages-old mathematical concepts.

Luc_VanDyck

Patience my friend ... patience.

Marije_Brummel

Please be patient. The presentations will be available on TechEd dvd. I will try to get them sooner than that.

kriki

Luc Van Dyck wrote:

Patience my friend ... patience.

I would even say more:
Patience is a virtue! (don't ask me who said this originally)

Or also:
Patience is the thing you admire in the driver of the car behind you and hate in the driver of the car before you.

Miklos_Hollender

Screenshots? What screenshots? The only thing I want is the list of bugs tagged with "won't fix until SP1"

Anonymous

johnson alonso wrote:

For me, to be a developer is not difficult, because I've created new forms, new buttons, new reports, etc, without reading navision development manual. the important in the development is the idea behind it like creating add-on.

Do you think by creating new button , make you a developer ??
so stupid of you

Waldo

I heared M$ is releasing a MS-CRM connector as well (other than tectura)? Somebody can confirm?

ara3n

Any new info on Getting those videos, screenshots?

Marije_Brummel

Next week I hope.

They said 3 weeks after TechEd. [-o<

Marije_Brummel

And here it is

http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... highlight=