Integration with Dynamics NAV

Joseph_Abou_Nader

Hi Guys

Can someone explain how integration is done between Dynamics NAV & a third party software running on top of SQL Server 2005/2008

Is there any web services tool that can be used or something similar?

What is needed to assess and estimate an interface with Dynamics NAV?

Should the integration be affected in case a new version of Dynamics NAV is released?

Thanks.

kine

NAV 2009 have support to work as WebService server. You can easily share data in a way similar how the data are displayed on the pages of Role Tailored Client. External app could change the data through this webservices, NAV developers could extend te functionality with own functions etc. I think that this is a best way how to integrate. Of course, sometime you can use e.g. transaction replication to replicate some raw data from NAV to some other DB and work with this copy e.g. for webshop (for better performance), but in this case the replication is only in one direction NAV->External app. The way back is better to do through the WS, because whole business logic could be used. Replication is not solving everything, e.g. calculation of actual price for specific customer, item and quantity is hard to calculate only over raw data and is better to use NAV business logic for this - it means calling the WebService function created for that.

Because the WS could be done in C/Side, the development is not hard, depends on requests.

Joseph_Abou_Nader

Thank you for the update kine...

If I understood well, we can use the the web server service to read/write data (text or tab-delimited).

Is there any document that we can use to understand this functionality and how it works.

Thanks again.

kine

WS are using XML files to communicate, not csv etc... ;-)

I recommend to learn something around WebServices. You can look at MSDN documentation for NAV 2009 too..

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 60%29.aspx)

Joseph_Abou_Nader

Thank you for a great reply...

Have a nice day

Joseph_Abou_Nader

One more thing to add...

What does the Webshop do exactly?

kine

Do you mean WebServices or really "WebShop" I mentioned?

Joseph_Abou_Nader

Webshop...

kine

It depends on WebShop vendor... :-) we are doing only the integrations. E.g. replicating Items, Customers, Webusers etc.

Joseph_Abou_Nader

We might be integrating Dynamics NAV with another windows application...

WS should be working in the same logic??

kine

Yes, WS are good because could be "consumed" by nearly everything (PHP, ASP, C#, Java....) - it is just XML send e.g. over HTTP with some envelope...

Romul

Joseph Abou Nader wrote:

We might be integrating Dynamics NAV with another windows application...

WS should be working in the same logic??

I'm going to add a couple of things to recommendations. If Kine doesn't protest against it
Web Services are really not modern now... Because there is technology WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) from Microsoft. I think that next versions of Navision will be support this feature. But you should not think about it right now.

Support of Web Services gives you really broad opportunities: to use WF (Workflow Foundation), to use WCF, to use your own Windows Services (why not) and many many other technologies... Each uses such things as SOAP, WSDL, XML...

kine

I have nothing agains it...

For me the WCF (.NET 3.5) is something what extend the WS (.NET 2.0) with new features. But still WCF includes the WS. To extend my knowledge, quick search find this presentation about difference between WCF and WS. Just for others like me who want to know the differenece... 8)

Romul

kine wrote:

I have nothing agains it...

For me the WCF (.NET 3.5) is something what extend the WS (.NET 2.0) with new features. But still WCF includes the WS. To extend my knowledge, quick search find this presentation about difference between WCF and WS. Just for others like me who want to know the differenece... 8)

Wow... Presentation is pretty but not clever... Absolutely. The main reason you don't understand differences: you are not professional developer of Web Services. As I am
Interoperability, security, speed etc. There are really many internal features not visibled outside.

Hanen

Hi,

I have the same problem, I'm going to integrate MS Dynamics Nav 2009 using WS, MS Dynamics Nav will consume services developped using WCF technology and the external web application will do the same so to resume both the too application has to develop web services using WCF technology and Nav must be able to call from and back this services.

How can I do that knowing that I did the job using dll but this time it's different

Thanks for your help.

Beate

Hi there,

try and have a look at RapidiOnline (http://www.rapidionline.com). RapidiOnline provides on-demand data integration between MS Dynamics NAV and different databases, also MS SQL.