Navision 5 Developers Licence

zeninoleg

Do you think that we will be able to use the old Developers Licence with version 5?

sridhar999

Yes, i think so

Marije_Brummel

Why do you ask? In 4 we got menusuites, so they were added to the partner licences.

In 5 we will have new objects, so we will probably need a new license do work with that.

Old objects will work fine with the old license.

PAR

It is definately necessary to get a new licensefile when 5.0 is being released. This is done by adding a new granule ID to the license file.

It is a nice way for microsoft to do the annual licensefile couting :-)

Regards

Palle

Alex_Chow

zeninoleg wrote:

Do you think that we will be able to use the old Developers Licence with version 5?

Nope.

Just look at your developer's license. There is a 3.xx and 4.xx license granule. When 5.0 comes out, you will need to update your license with 5.xx.

Only MSFT will be able to do that.

zeninoleg

Well, I work for the end user and was wondering if it will be posiible for me to learn version 5 without my company upgrading to the next version.......
I quess not......

themave

zeninoleg wrote:

Well, I work for the end user and was wondering if it will be posiible for me to learn version 5 without my company upgrading to the next version.......
I quess not......

If you are paying for the maintenance fee, you can get the license, it won't stop you from continuing to use the 4.0 database, I plan on getting the 5.0 license and program and running it on a test server, while the live database remains on 4.0. May never go to 5.0 but I have paid for the maintenance and will get the code and license for it.

zeninoleg

My concern is that we do not have full developer's licence(not able to modify ledgers and posting routines and edit ALL objects - can edit only objects in purchased granules),
so I think they would not give us one even though we are paying all fees

themave

zeninoleg wrote:

My concern is that we do not have full developer's licence(not able to modify ledgers and posting routines and edit ALL objects - can edit only objects in purchased granules),
so I think they would not give us one even though we are paying all fees

that is true, they will never give a developers license to an end user for testing, They will only give you a license you have paid for. You should get the 5.0 license even if you don't upgrade, because if in the future you decide to stop paying maintenance fee's they won't give you the license then, better to have it just in case you decide to upgrade later.

We just upgraded from 2.0 to 4.0, an I highly doubt we will upgrade again. after this year we are thinking of discontinuing the maintenance. But I will get the 5.0 license just in case.

nunomaia

I don’t understand the rush to adapt version 5 of Navision, probably it will have many bugs. See the example of version 4, had many bugs, only with SP2 most of those bugs where solved. Even in SP2 I had detected bugs and submitted to MS to get updates. Now imagine a redesigned application, probably will have “redesigned bugs” :-). It's better to wait for SP1 or SP2.

We just upgraded from 2.0 to 4.0, an I highly doubt we will upgrade again. after this year we are thinking of discontinuing the maintenance

Themave, The eternal problem of upgrading an ERP . Upgrading an ERP normally means a more expensive project than a completely new ERP.

Microsoft have to give new licenses, or probably not. New licenses to partners are being issued with a 2 year range. I think those license will have the granules to run NAV 5.0.

Customers of course will have to upgrade their license if they have maintenance plans. Customers with ending maintenance should rush to upgrade new licenses even if they will not upgrade to version 5. Maybe some day you want to have a look to version 5 and you can use your own license.

PAR

A new granule ID is needed when 5.0 gets released.... So in order to be able to run 5.0 - your license file needs to be upgraded.

You you're paying your maintenance-fee this is done for free (perhaps your NSC want to charge you a small fee for the service).

Alex_Chow

zeninoleg wrote:

Well, I work for the end user and was wondering if it will be posiible for me to learn version 5 without my company upgrading to the next version.......
I quess not......

What's wrong with using the demo database with the demo license to learn the new version?

Alex_Chow

PAR wrote:

A new granule ID is needed when 5.0 gets released.... So in order to be able to run 5.0 - your license file needs to be upgraded.

You you're paying your maintenance-fee this is done for free (perhaps your NSC want to charge you a small fee for the service).

The software is free if you're on the maintanence. This is the contract/agreement between you and Microsoft.

However, the labor required is between you and your solution provider.

They are 2 separate issues.

Waldo

try to explain THAT to a customer... :-k

Anyway ...

We have a customer wich does it's own development (they bought their developer's license. When 5.0 comes, they will receive a developer's license to develop in the new objects... . They will even do their own upgrade.

Alex_Chow

Waldo wrote:

try to explain THAT to a customer... :-k

I actually do...

themave

Waldo wrote:

try to explain THAT to a customer... :-k

Anyway ...

We have a customer wich does it's own development (they bought their developer's license. When 5.0 comes, they will receive a developer's license to develop in the new objects... . They will even do their own upgrade.

As a customer I feel the maintenace is a rip off. yes we have the right to the software, we paid the maintenance, just to actually use it we have to pay extra to get it installed.

Even a hotfix has to go through a solution center, they are not available directly to end users.

Waldo

May be you can post how you do this in the Tips&Tricks?

David_Singleton

The upgrade to version 5 is going to be something very very different to what most of you have seen for a Navision upgrade. In fact going from 4 to 5 will be more like going from 3.55 (DOS) to 1.1 (Windows) was 10 years ago. As well as the normal database logic ocnversion, you will also need todo a lot of object conversion using special tools. I don't think this is something that end users are going to be able to do them selves. Just the training investment to do one conversion would not be viable.

I don't see the conversion as being anything bigger than what we are used to, just different. By the way, I did quite a few upgrades from DOS to Windows, and they were quite easy.

Also, even though it will probably be possible to skip versions, I am recommending that the conversion is done from 4 to 5. This is just my opinion, but I am recommending Navision End users that are planning to move to 5 that they get upto 4 before hand.

kine

In my opinion this "big" upgrade will be problem only if you want to use all "new" features of Nav 5 like 3-tier design with thin client. But if you will use just the old client, you can do the upgrade without any special upgrade tool etc. And for example, you can start converting the old forms to "webforms" one by one as you need them etc.

David_Singleton

kine wrote:

In my opinion this "big" upgrade will be problem only if you want to use all "new" features of Nav 5 like 3-tier design with thin client. But if you will use just the old client, you can do the upgrade without any special upgrade tool etc. And for example, you can start converting the old forms to "webforms" one by one as you need them etc.

Yes I agree, with that. But I really wasn't thinking about a technical upgrade, I would assume by now that the majority of Navision users are already on the 400 executables. What I was more thinking of are the clients that are planning to use the 3 tier setup, and the new features. I fear that doing a business logic upgrade, AND a major new technical setup will be a big hit to their day to day business process. Also I would assume that 2.6 and 3.7 users that are anxious to move to 5 will do it for the new features.

But yes for sure those just wanting to upgrade to be on the latest exes have a different situation.

kine

David Singleton wrote:

But yes for sure those just wanting to upgrade to be on the latest exes have a different situation.

I didn't write just about technical update, but complete upgrade to newer objects. This will be still same as when upgrading from 2.60 to 3.70 or between another versions. You do not need to use all the new stuff around 3-tier architecture. You can just upgrade to newer objects and don't upgrade old customization for new client. You can still use "old" (I mean thick) client with 5.00 object (I hope that there wasn't change in last few months around this). And the functionality can be upgraded for new client after the upgrade, step by step.

Alex_Chow

You can do the upgrade or propose that the customer start fresh with 5.0 with the beginning balances going forward.

Waldo

I agree with Kine and lizard.

The most difficult thing about an upgrade is the data conversion, so indeed, if you can skip this by only starting with the opening balances ... perfect!

Furthermore, we will still do everything in C/SIDE. It is also possible to only work with C/SIDE client, so it will be just like a normal upgrade if customers choose only for using the old client.

When they want to use the Dynamics Client ... it will be a big job. It won't be a matter of just upgrading, but of recreating the custom forms, and much much more...

Alex_Chow

Plus, think of the nightmare and the downtime that's associated with upgrading a 40GB database... Gives me shivers just thinking about it.

Waldo

To give you an impression ... we just upgraded a database (60 companies) of 75 Gb in 4 days (working day and night)... . For some reason, backup/restore took a huge amount of time ...

DenSter

NAV sends packets of about 3 records to SQL Server at a time, and a restore is considered to be one big transction, that's why it takes so long. I observed a NAV restore of one company (of a total of 5 companies) on a 32 dual core processor machine with 250 GB of RAM take 9 hours, and we had to disable keys to take it down to 'just' 9 hours. It took us 5 days to build that database. It was embarassing to see just one processor being used and those tiny packets being sent to SL Server. The total database was more than 300GB.

Then just as an experiment we took a SQL backup and restored it, just to see how long that would take. I figured we'd go out to lunch and take it easy, but this entire database (all 5 companies) took a total of 20 minutes to restore. Now that was a sight to see, with 64 processors being used at once and SQL Server processing large amounts of data (like 300MB per second).

MSFT will have to address this issue in the next version of NAV. We need the ability to take advantage of multiple processors, and we need NAV to start using more SQL Server potential.

Waldo

DenSter wrote:

MSFT will have to address this issue in the next version of NAV. We need the ability to take advantage of multiple processors, and we need NAV to start using more SQL Server potential.

Amen!

David_Singleton

DenSter wrote:

NAV sends packets of about 3 records to SQL Server at a time, and a restore is considered to be one big transction, that's why it takes so long. I observed a NAV restore of one company (of a total of 5 companies) on a 32 dual core processor machine with 250 GB of RAM take 9 hours, and we had to disable keys to take it down to 'just' 9 hours. It took us 5 days to build that database. It was embarassing to see just one processor being used and those tiny packets being sent to SL Server. The total database was more than 300GB.

Then just as an experiment we took a SQL backup and restored it, just to see how long that would take. I figured we'd go out to lunch and take it easy, but this entire database (all 5 companies) took a total of 20 minutes to restore. Now that was a sight to see, with 64 processors being used at once and SQL Server processing large amounts of data (like 300MB per second).

MSFT will have to address this issue in the next version of NAV. We need the ability to take advantage of multiple processors, and we need NAV to start using more SQL Server potential.

This though would mean that they couldn't use the version principle. So there would be three options
1/ Add Version principle and Optomistic concureny to SQL. (Would be the best solution, but very unlikely to happen).
2/ Support two seperate applications, one for SQL optimized for ROW locking and transaction based database, and a C/SIDE one optimized for Version Principle and Optomistic Concurrency.
3/ Dump C/SIDE.

1 would be ideal, and then they could also complete other great Navision concepts that were dummped, like progressive backups and restores of versions. General access to C/DART. ANd version based RAM database for super high speed. But can we see this happening. Not likely. They need to tap intot he huge SQL developer skill base, and changing core technolgy like lcoking and roll back would not be taken well.

So short term its got to be 2. We are already seeing that some functionality will be possible in SQL and not C/SIDE, so this is a huge step for Navision.

As for 3, well one day I guess it will happen. Lets just hope we get a maintinence free SQL before that happens though.

kine

1/ Add Version principle and Optomistic concureny to SQL. (Would be the best solution, but very unlikely to happen).

Versioning is part of MS SQL 2005! But I am not able to say more, because I do not know more about that, but it exists!

(see MS SQL 2005 books on-line - "Isolation Levels in the Database Engine" part about "READ_COMMITED_SNAPSHOT")

David_Singleton

kine wrote:

1/ Add Version principle and Optomistic concureny to SQL. (Would be the best solution, but very unlikely to happen).

Versioning is part of MS SQL 2005! But I am not able to say more, because I do not know more about that, but it exists!

(see MS SQL 2005 books on-line - "Isolation Levels in the Database Engine" part about "READ_COMMITED_SNAPSHOT")

That's very interesting, so if they can generate true version (not a roll back), then it should also be posible to have optomistic concurrency?

I don't understand SQL well enought to understand how Version principle and Roll back could work simultaneously, but it seems to make sense that it could, whcih could also open possibilities of having optomistic concurrency for normal "navision type" work, and Row locking for transaction intesive operations such as Posting and copying.

Could we actually see the best of both worlds or is that just a dream.

David_Singleton

Whoops two off topic posts in 10 minutes :oops: some moderator should tell me off.

In fairness though I was just replying to someone elses off topic post :oops: