What is supported in Nav5.0 from the following list

a_developer

1. Text Length greater than 250 chars in tables (e.g. varchar 2 style)
2. Text Length greater than 1024 chars for variables
3. Sorting in tables for columns that are calculated on the fly (i.e. columns that do not get their data from a table)
4. Sorting in tables for columns that do a Flowfield Lookup
5. Multiline table rows that have the height appropriate for their text (at the moment all rows get the same height)
6. Splitter panels
7. support for Activex controls on forms
8. New functions that can ease UNION, DISTINCT style of operations
9. Support some standard pic formats apart from bmp (e.g. gif, jpg, tif)
10. Correct Scrollbar size in respect to the ratio of shown/total records
11. Support for embedded objects in reports (e.g. embed a graph)
12. New triggers (Click, double Click)

David_Singleton

Take a like at Kamil's blog, it will tell you what is new. But don't expect too much, 5.0 has some great stuff, but its all basically the 4.00 technology.

As to 5.1, the scenario will be different, since this is a completely new technology, but everything there is NDA at the moment.

By the way, this "Wish List" is basically developer oriented, and its very important to remember that Dynamics NAV is an ERP package, it IS NOT a development language.

kine

Answer is:

1..12: No

The client is still same with just minor changes. To be able to support what you are requesting the whole system will need to be changes to another technology. But this will be not done till some future versions. Do not forget that 5.1 will still support old C/Side client and this mean that there will be no change in backend technology. You can assume this after convergence of all Dynamics products to same interface, after that the backend will be changed. But no details are known yet.

Waldo

This is indeed a nice (dev-oriented) list of things that you have in other systems, but not in NAV. But if you search closely, there are some nice workarounds available for some of the points... . Browse the download section, and you'll see .

David_Singleton

Well you may say that Navision is missing a lot of stuff, but what about Visual Studio, its really bad.

I was just playing in Visual Studio right now, and trying to simply add a new field to a customer and then post and invoice with that new field, first I could not even find a database that has the customer table in it, I couldn't find an invoice posting routine, nothing.

So lets sit together, you guys with Visual Studio (a development environment), and all the high tech developer tools, let me sit with Navision (an ERP system). Then we will see whose customer has a working solution first.

Navision is NOT a development environment. PC&C, Navision and Microsoft have been saying that for 18 years now.

Miklos_Hollender

That's true from where you are standing now, Dave, but remember how you felt when you started with Navision. I remember one of my first tasks being to fix it that invoices always have 3 copies regardless of the settings etc. and I spent hours and hours looking for a FOR loop in the invoice when finally I realized that funny DataItem running on an Integer table which does not even exist in the blasted database is the Navision report's way of saying "FOR". It was probably the most counter-intuitive thing I've ever seen. A couple of years later I got so used to it that I was actually looking for how to do the same thing with Reporting Services So, I assume that if you would just sit beside somebody who is developing with Visual Studio for 3-6 years I think and watching him I think the productivity wouldn't be so bad. Clearly, it's a lower level therefore more verbose way of doing things - unless one uses the excellent DevForce plug-in: http://www.ideablade.com/downloads.html

On the other hand, there is one problem with Visual Studio that DevForce cannot help: writing business logic in compiled EXE files and reinstalling all the clients at every small change is just crazy.

Miklos_Hollender

Well if Microsoft would do just this one and only thing in 5.1 I would be soooo happy. Currently every small customization f.e. in a report looks like

Gadget.SETCURRENTKEY(Foo,Bar,Baz,Quux);
Gadget.SETRANGE(Foo,'THIS');
Gadget.SETRANGE(Bar,'IS');
Gadget.SETRANGE(Baz,'TOO');
Gadget.SETRANGE(Quux,'MUCH');
IF Gadget.FINDSET(False,False) THEN REPEAT
   TotalGadgetAmount+=Gadget.Amount;
UNTIL Gadget.NEXT=0;

The same thing in SQL is a one-liner:

SELECT SUM(Amount) FROM dbo.Gadget WHERE Foo='THIS' AND Bar='IS' AND Baz='TOO' AND Quux='MUCH';

The same thing in, for example, Ruby on Rails:

gadgets=Gadget.find_all(['Foo'=>'THIS', 'Bar'=>'IS', 'Baz'=>'TOO', 'Quux'=>'MUCH'])
gadgets.each do |gadget| 
   total_gadget_amount += gadget.amount
end

So... a SETRANGE/SETFILTER with multiple conditions... that would be a big help!

kine

What about this??? 8)

Gadget.SETCURRENTKEY(Foo,Bar,Baz,Quux);
Gadget.SETRANGE(Foo,'THIS');
Gadget.SETRANGE(Bar,'IS');
Gadget.SETRANGE(Baz,'TOO');
Gadget.SETRANGE(Quux,'MUCH');
Gadget.CALCSUMS(Amount);
TotalGadgetAmount := Gadget.Amount;

a_developer

Waldo wrote:

This is indeed a nice (dev-oriented) list of things that you have in other systems, but not in NAV. But if you search closely, there are some nice workarounds available for some of the points... . Browse the download section, and you'll see .

Wrong! This is a customer-oriented list. All those things are needed in order to create an application that can at least compete with the features of other applications from other vendors.

Try explain to a customer why he cannot:
1. Sort by a given column because it is a flowfield (like he knows OR cares)
2. Double click (as is the microsoft way) on a row and get a new window
3. Why there is no splitter
4. Why he cannot type memos (more than 250 chars). Dont give me the "workaround ways" because they have problems:
a. use an add-on control (hack it to know where to paint) and dump it into BLOB (great! there goes searching out of the window)
b. Use some kind of "Navision Comments" functionality and get down to the 250+250+250+250 chars in multiple fields extravaganza.
5. Why there are NO colors on the print outs
6. Preview a pic that is non-bitmap (who the #$%^ uses bitmaps anyway?)

While you are giving out your explanation to the customer 2 things happen:
1. If you are lucky he just tells you the list of applications that DO these things
2. If you are unlucky he starts for you a small in-house MS-access application that was hacked together in 2 weeks by some non-IT guy for fun. Turns out that this app (even with its business logic failures/ommissions) LOOKS, and BEHAVES better than your $$$$/user Navision.

Why are they calling it version 5 anyway if they have no major changes? Why dont they focus on the core problems of the current platform before giving new features?

I know that Sun is doing a voting for each iterration of JAVA for example. Top 100 bugs/showstoppers go into the next version. Why dont they do the same with Navision?

I see many replies from users that are MVP. If you are in some way affiliated with MS and have a way of talking this further up the chain please do. My country's Navision Microsoft staff is ignoring me

ara3n

One thing with using SQL statement is that you have to basically write the whole statement in a string. And spend the time figuring out what is wrong with the statement. They can become some really complex statements, and you'll spend more time fixing the SQL statement than working on business logic. That is why they are changing SQL statements with LINQ. take a look videos on Chanel 9. That is a better solution. I'm hoping we might get this when the Dynamics product is released.

kine

a_developer:
1) Customer must think about two options:
a) He want the hi-tech system, but with limited functionality and customization (he can sort tables by any field etc.) (functionality is limited, because there were no time to create it)
b) He want working system with wide functionality with possibility of easy and fast customization event though the system will be not hi-tech, with limited interface (but still interface which is created for fast data access and easy orientation) (functionality is wide and flexible, because all was developed for years with experiences of many customers).

Waldo

a_developer wrote:

Waldo wrote:

This is indeed a nice (dev-oriented) list of things that you have in other systems, but not in NAV. But if you search closely, there are some nice workarounds available for some of the points... . Browse the download section, and you'll see .

Wrong! This is a customer-oriented list. All those things are needed in order to create an application that can at least compete with the features of other applications from other vendors.

Try explain to a customer why he cannot:
1. Sort by a given column because it is a flowfield (like he knows OR cares)
2. ...

What you are asking for is a big change of the client, not functionality. MS is focusing on functionality ... on the application ... on the business logic. Isn't that logic? Isn't the most important thing that you CAN import pictures, instead of it has to be .bmp, ... ?

All I can suggest ... wait for 5.1 =; . THis is a complete new client and nobody knows exactly what will be possible, but what I've seen so far, it looks promising ... so in a way ... who knows ... they might have dealt with all your points allready ... .

kine

Really, wait for 5.1... :-$

a_developer

kine wrote:

a_developer:
1) Customer must think about two options:
a) He want the hi-tech system, but with limited functionality and customization (he can sort tables by any field etc.) (functionality is limited, because there were no time to create it)
b) He want working system with wide functionality with possibility of easy and fast customization event though the system will be not hi-tech, with limited interface (but still interface which is created for fast data access and easy orientation) (functionality is wide and flexible, because all was developed for years with experiences of many customers).

Customers want option c)
c) High tech wide functionality systems. And other vendors ARE giving it (because they are in the same business 10+ years).

I am sweet talking my clients and quoting "rich functionality", "Microsoft", "easy customization" in every sentence I use. Of course all this desolves when I start replying:
"Sorry not supported by the platform"
"Maybe next version"
"We will contact our local dealer" (and we know the answer already)

When you give me a "sales" answer (that I too use on pre-sales) to my technical problem you have just answered my question (indirectly). And I dont like the "you have to live with it" answer :-(

Just read your wait for 5.1 posts. Lets just hope then. When is 5.1 comming out in greece btw?

kine

I cannot say you anything about the v5.1 now, but I hope that you will be happy with that (it is still under NDA and I personally do not know much details...)

a_developer

Just read your wait for 5.1 posts. Lets just hope then. When is 5.1 comming out in greece btw?

Waldo

Not known yet.

I believe you'll have to way (for localised version) at least 'till end of the year ... this is my guess.

DenSter

It was supposed to have been released last year, then they postponed it to right around now, and now they're saying Q3 2007. Who knows if they'll change their minds again. And I completely agree, this should not be NAV 5.0. It should be another service pack, or the new architecture should be NAV 6.

I don't know which country group Greece is in, so it might be a little longer.

DenSter

Well actually, 4.0 SP2 should have been a new version, with all the new functionality. SP's should only address bugs, new functionality should come in a new version. Sorry, don't mean to highjack the thread... 8-[

GrahamS7

From a NAV Development perspective a lot of the technical restrictions are a residual of technical architecture constraints in the Native Navision Database Option. The 5.0 Release is a whole lot of application functionality features. NAV 5.1 adds the Microsoft Dynamics Role based Client UI Option.

It has been rumoured that Microsoft will depricate the Native Navision Database Option from NAV R6.0, therefore we could see a lot of changes in the development tools environment in this release, as well as tighter integration with SS2005 BI, Analysis Services, Reporting Services.

DenSter

The operative word being 'could'

kriki

[Topic moved from Upcoming version NAV 5.1 forum to Navision forum]