Is Navision going .net?

deltoid

I was told awhile ago that Navision will be going .net.

I'm looking for more information on this. When they say going .net do they mean we will be using a .net language for development. Like C# or possibly CAL.net? Will we be using visual studio for development?

Which version is this meant to be happening in?

I really have no clue so any links or information to point me in the right direction would be apprechiated. Thanks.

ara3n

Yeah I had same question as well. if you look at Longhorn, they release all sort of pre-beta info in site like http://channel9.msdn.com/. But for any of the erp system, there is no information available. I guess it's still competitive market so MS is still not a dominant player, hence the NDA.

deltoid

Thanks for the reply ara3n. So do you know, once all the phases have been rolled out will still be doing development from within Navision. Thing is CSIDE is a pretty poor IDE. I'm hoping that either Microsoft update CSIDE to something a little more developer friendly or make Visual Studio the IDE for Navision. I'm also wondering when they say they are going .net if it means we can call .net libraries from within Navision.

Possibly web enabled will be something like how Oracle and JDE works where the user uses a broswer to access the application? Making easier to allow users to access the application from remote sites. I doubt that though as Windows Forms applications are alot more user friendly. But it could be something like that.

ara3n

interesting.

deltoid

ara3n wrote:

well Microsoft Dynimics is .NET and all the code we've written in CAL will have to be migrated and we'll use Visual Studio as development environment for sure. This will happend after navision 6, which is phase 2.

Ok, thats good to hear then.

Know anywhere I can find more information on it? I've tried searching around but not had much luck.

kine

As ara3n wrote, I know but I am not allowed to say. But don't be afraid of some big change. It will be big change :-), but Microsoft knows, that many Navision developers are not programmers guru. Dynamix NAV will be modern application. You can see the shift in Navision 4.00 SP1 (MS SQL optimalizations, Share point services connections etc.). Personally I am looking forward the Dynamix NAV (Navision 5). It will be nice fresh air into old Navision. Of course, we must count with problems like when Navision went from DOS to Windows...

deltoid

Don't worry I'm not afraid of change. I'm looking forward to it. I've come into Navision from a programmer perspective and know alot of languages. For me Navision advancing can't come soon enough.

DenSter

Same here, I've seen a lot of it but am not allowed to say much about it. It is going to be very nice though, both from the application's functionality as well as the technical side of it.

If you have access to partnersource, there are some powerpoint presentations available there, for partners only.

That was an awesome day in Seattle wasn't it Kamil \:D/

kine

Sorry, but I will be off-topic now...

Yes, it was. There are some pictures from there...

http://www.darkzone.cz/~ksacek/seattle2/index.htm

of course, nothing under NDA 8) ...

But more and more I can see, that others know many secret things... I am looking forward the discussion about Dynamix Nav after MS will publish the informations...

ovicash

DenSter wrote:

Same here, I've seen a lot of it but am not allowed to say much about it. It is going to be very nice though, both from the application's functionality as well as the technical side of it.

If you have access to partnersource, there are some powerpoint presentations available there, for partners only.

That was an awesome day in Seattle wasn't it Kamil \:D/

Do you have a link?:) I can't find it on PartnerSource :oops:

DenSter

I don't have a link handy right now, but you should be able to find the presentations if you search for 'Dynamics', and browse the marketing areas. I found a few of them yesterday.

DenSter

When you get into partnersource, there is a link on the left side called 'strategy and roadmaps'. When you click that link, you should get to a page that has a link to the 'product strategy toolbox'. On that page you will find the powerpoints I was talking about.

deltoid

Thanks for the info about the ppt on partnersource. I'm downloading it now.

I was doing some reading yesterday on Navision 5.0 and that it will become a 3 tier application as apposed to the 2 tier client/server model its using now.

Someone in this thread also said that Nav 5 will be using a new gui. Something about windows forms. Anyone know how we will go about developing these forms? I don't see a point making a new editor for windows forms for just 1 version of Navision when by version 6 its going to use visual studio. So I was thinking will we be using visual studio for form editing in version 5? If so does that mean there will be some type of new integration between external programs and Navision working together?

kine

If so does that mean there will be some type of new integration between external programs and Navision working together?

Of course, as you can see in SP1 for 4.00, Navision is trying to be able to integrate into other applications. If you know more about "green" target, you know what is the final form of Dynamix.

deltoid

I was meaning more so that it seems that if the forms are external to navision then they can call functions which exist in the C/AL functions within navision. You can't do that with v4 already can you?

kine

Question is: what does it mean "external to Navision"? It is still "Navision"... :-)

deltoid

Well if Navision is to use Windows Forms it wouldn't make sense to make a development tool within Navision to develop these forms just for version 5 considering by version 6 Navision will be using a new IDE. So why waste peoples time learning a new development tool for creating forms for just 1 version. So I'd assume we would be using something like Visual Studio to create the Windows Forms for the application in version 5.0.

In which case if we are using Windows Forms as the GUI for the application currently there is no way to call a piece of code in Navision from an external program (that I know of) which is what the windows form would be. So does this mean in version 5.0 we can expect some new type of functionality to allow external programs to call code within a Navision object say to validate data entered into the form or call a codeunit due to a button press on the form.