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Directions USA 2010 | Architecture in Transition (Full Text)
Marije_Brummel
Member, Moderators Design Patterns Posts: 4,262
UPDATED: As requested by Luc I have put the entire text online. Reason for the link was that the text could be moderated by MSFT. Guess it is fine now after being online for two days.
Enjoy...
I just got out of a really interesting session with Lars Hammer and Thomas Hejlsberg. For those of you who are not familiar with these names: they are the architects of Dynamics NAV.
The cool thing about their job is they and their team get to invent cool stuff that might eventually be in the product one day. And that is what this session was all about.
So the things I write in this post are not features in NAV 7 or 8, they are ideas of things that might possibly end up in the product at some form.
I will highlight the three things that impressed me the most.
DevBase
Now this product has been demonstrated before at Directions EMEA and I had the privilege of playing around with it.
DevBase is a prototype of a tool that might allow us in the future to save modifications between objects rather than the complete objects.
The way it works is that it computes the Delta between two objects knowing the metadata and syntax of Dynamics NAV.
This delta or modification can then be reapplied to another version of the object and automatically implemented without manually merging the objects.
The possibilities of this concept are amazing. Imagine an ISV like Agiles or Lanham provide you with a package of modifications rather than a fob. You would be able to implement this package into a database that already has been customized or has other ISV solutions in it.
This might be the answer to all the merging headaches we have.
And it gets even better! The idea is to deliver DevBase as an application written in C/AL so you can modify it yourself!
RTC Debugger
Next thing they showed was a prototype of a possible future debugger for the RTC. Now for me, right now I would go for ANY debugger rather then what we currently have: NOTHING.
Now this prototype has some interesting features. First is that they would like to allow us to change the value of variables during debugging. So for example you can change the value of an integer from 1 to 2 during the execution of the code.
The second thing is conditional breakpoints. This allows you to say: only break here if the value of this and that is such and so.
Lastly and most cool was reverse debugging. You can record a transaction and play it backwards or have a customer send you a debugging file to analyze.
Query
Last but not least they showed an idea they are having, also very much prototype, about a new object type called a query. Basically it is structured in the same way as a report with nested dataitems but rather than issuing the SQL statements record by record and dataitem by dataitem it will do a join based on the DataItemLink.
How cool would that be!
But it gets better. You can manipulate the dataset that SQL server returns by C/AL code. You can add columns with variables, delete lines and even YIELD in new lines.
PROTOTYPE WARNING
Microsoft allowed me to blog about this session if I promised explicitly that these are PROTOTYPES of ideas that maybe in some form might be in the product in some version, or maybe never be.
But my suggestion would be to reply to this blog entry massively to have them give these cool prototype features a chance of a long lifecycle!
/Mark
Enjoy...
I just got out of a really interesting session with Lars Hammer and Thomas Hejlsberg. For those of you who are not familiar with these names: they are the architects of Dynamics NAV.
The cool thing about their job is they and their team get to invent cool stuff that might eventually be in the product one day. And that is what this session was all about.
So the things I write in this post are not features in NAV 7 or 8, they are ideas of things that might possibly end up in the product at some form.
I will highlight the three things that impressed me the most.
DevBase
Now this product has been demonstrated before at Directions EMEA and I had the privilege of playing around with it.
DevBase is a prototype of a tool that might allow us in the future to save modifications between objects rather than the complete objects.
The way it works is that it computes the Delta between two objects knowing the metadata and syntax of Dynamics NAV.
This delta or modification can then be reapplied to another version of the object and automatically implemented without manually merging the objects.
The possibilities of this concept are amazing. Imagine an ISV like Agiles or Lanham provide you with a package of modifications rather than a fob. You would be able to implement this package into a database that already has been customized or has other ISV solutions in it.
This might be the answer to all the merging headaches we have.
And it gets even better! The idea is to deliver DevBase as an application written in C/AL so you can modify it yourself!
RTC Debugger
Next thing they showed was a prototype of a possible future debugger for the RTC. Now for me, right now I would go for ANY debugger rather then what we currently have: NOTHING.
Now this prototype has some interesting features. First is that they would like to allow us to change the value of variables during debugging. So for example you can change the value of an integer from 1 to 2 during the execution of the code.
The second thing is conditional breakpoints. This allows you to say: only break here if the value of this and that is such and so.
Lastly and most cool was reverse debugging. You can record a transaction and play it backwards or have a customer send you a debugging file to analyze.
Query
Last but not least they showed an idea they are having, also very much prototype, about a new object type called a query. Basically it is structured in the same way as a report with nested dataitems but rather than issuing the SQL statements record by record and dataitem by dataitem it will do a join based on the DataItemLink.
How cool would that be!
But it gets better. You can manipulate the dataset that SQL server returns by C/AL code. You can add columns with variables, delete lines and even YIELD in new lines.
PROTOTYPE WARNING
Microsoft allowed me to blog about this session if I promised explicitly that these are PROTOTYPES of ideas that maybe in some form might be in the product in some version, or maybe never be.
But my suggestion would be to reply to this blog entry massively to have them give these cool prototype features a chance of a long lifecycle!
/Mark
0
Comments
Independent Consultant/Developer
blog: https://dynamicsuser.net/nav/b/ara3n
And they say C/AL is here to stay
Does anyone have a link to a run down on all of the announcements from Directions?
Directions is a very informal partner event where a lot of information sharing is based on trust and partner confidential.
I had to move heaven and earth together with Brett to get this announcement online.
Ask Waldo and Alex, both of them had to remove stuff from their blog more than once.
It's a thin line and both sides don't want to bite the hand that feeds 'm.
What rundowns are you looking for?
AP Commerce, Inc. = where I work
Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development = my book
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV - 3rd Edition = my 2nd book
Mostly what will be released in R2. I couldn't find anything on partnersource, other than that list that came out a while back with the four to five big bullet points.
Or just any big announcements in general. I know a lot of stuff can't be posted publicly, but I figure there has to be somewhere for partners to look who were unable to attend the conference.
AP Commerce, Inc. = where I work
Getting Started with Dynamics NAV 2013 Application Development = my book
Implementing Microsoft Dynamics NAV - 3rd Edition = my 2nd book