Information web shop ?!?

AndersW

We have several bookeeping companies running Navision.
We are also considering putting up a web-site to provide the customers with financial information. Security between each company does of course need to be tight. The access to the information should be on individual or group base for the customer companies employees.

The information we are considering is read-only information (reports et al). (For customers actually working directly into Navision would violate the license terms as I understand it).

One way to go would be to try use the reports in Navision to generate the HTML pages needed to be displayed.
This is the solution currently beeing discussed with a NSC.
The suggest using MMQ between the web server and Navision.
Obviously a solution similair to the web shop.

As I understand it "User Portals" doesn't work according to the license terms since it isn't OUR own employees who will get the information.


Any comments on this?
Any other "standard" products we should consider?
Anbody knowing about any other Navision technique coming up in any release soon which would support what we want to do?



[This message has been edited by AndersW (edited 16-02-2001).]

John_Tegelaar

As first reaction, I would say there are a couple of solutions thinkable. But it also depends on what the requirements are. Do the customers want to have dynamic data (information polled from the database the moment they call up the webpage), or is static data (refreshed by yourself, say once a day) sufficient? How many choices in information do they require? More or less free selection of which report to run, or a specific report to be shown? Is there a 24/7 connection between the web and the navision server, or would you need to upload the pages to the server at a provider? How many simultaneous users do you envision?

You probably don't want to have "strangers" having direct access to the Navision database for (obvious) reasons of security.

Taking it all together, I have the feeling you would be best off with setting up a separate webserver (i.e. one running Apache), and use a couple of Java driven pages (JSP's) to make the connection to the database, pull the required data out, and assemble the figures into a neat webpage. Perhaps some XML schema's and/or XBRL reports will come in handy (which does work with Navision, see www.xbrl.org), but saving the reports in HTML format on the webserver could perhaps do the job already. Access to the pages can be quite easily controlled with login/password protection. But with the information you provided, this is just some general advice only. Surely a more detailed study to the functional requirements would be needed.

John

mfabian

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AndersW:
For customers actually working directly into Navision would violate the license terms as I understand it<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is not entirely correct. What you describe here is the classical ASP (Application Service Provider) model for which different licensing model has been set up by Navision.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote

As I understand it "User Portals" doesn't work according to the license terms since it isn't OUR own employees who will get the information.

If you are not in a hurry you might want to wait for NF 2.65 or even NF 3.0 being released as these versions will have the Web-services included you seem to need.
If implement Web-services now, developement might be pretty expensive and will have to be replaced in 6 month. So consider this.

Regards

Marcus

AndersW

fabian (or anyone?):

Got any details about these new releases?
Navision homepage is certainly "broad" with little details about what´s to come.

Should "User Portals" be the main focus then, or another (new technology) approach?

As for the licensing I understand that Navision has not yet implemented a full scale ASP pricing model. Although som early trials have been preformed, right? As I understand the ASP licensing model it's based on assumption that all customers can and shall use a common STANDARD VERSION of Navison, with no customer unique solutions.

mfabian

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote

Got any details about these new releases?

NF 3.0 Beta contains 35 Helpfiles so I guess the answer is "yes". But I'm far from even having an overview about how this new stuff works. Unfortunately NF 3.0 requires Windows 2000 Server to run the Navision Application Server and It will takes 10 days until my new Computer with W2000 Server arrived.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote

Should "User Portals" be the main focus then, or another (new technology) approach?

It's difficult to answer as I don't have experience with the User Portals yet. However Remote-Access to a NF DB can also be established using PCAnyWare or Citrix Metaframe.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote

As I understand the ASP licensing model it's based on assumption that all customers can and shall use a common STANDARD VERSION of Navison, with no customer unique solutions.

I'm a developer and never cared about things like licensing. But as far as I know Navision the assumption that only the Standard Version can be licensed must be wrong. I have never seen a Navision Installation without customer modifications.

Marcus

AndersW

fabian,
I agree about the common need for modifications.
That's why ASP-hosting of Navision (and many other ERP-solutions) never might be a true ASP concept in the sense of a one-to-many solution. Word & Excel can be sold as a standard prdouct, Navision is a tool, not a product. But this is going a little off-topic.