Dynamics Navision 5 Development Environment

DeSp · 2006-08-04

Perhaps I've missed something but what is about a development environment in Nav 5?
I have seen some Nav 5 presentations with all that modern looking role-based client saying that development stiil be in C/SIDE. But what should we expect from it? Will it have any new features: code highlighting, some kind of intellisense and so on? I think it's time to give us a better IDE.

Marije_Brummel · 2006-08-04

The information we now have is that we will still have to do developing in the old client and deploy to the new client.

There are lot of plans and roumours about the future but nobody knows for sure what will happen.

Miklos_Hollender · 2006-08-04

That's good news, because it hints that the new client will have a completely redesigned IDE after NAV5, maybe in NAV6, possibly a VS plugin like the Reporting Services designer.

However, I think Microsoft should go into a shared source direction - I mean if they would share the source of the C/SIDE IDE with say, 10 of us, two weeks later intellisense and coloring would be developed, and we would be happy to do it for free.

DeSp · 2006-08-04

However, I think Microsoft should go into a shared source direction - I mean if they would share the source of the C/SIDE IDE with say, 10 of us, two weeks later intellisense and coloring would be developed, and we would be happy to do it for free.

Let's suggest it to Microsoft

zeninoleg · 2006-08-04

You know what, we do not really ask for a lot. There are some small things like highlighting and intellisence. I do not think we need something as advanced as Visual Studio. Just little things which will make the life of the developer a bit more colourful

Miklos_Hollender · 2006-08-04

Actually... there some strange magic with the current C/AL code editor. Just for fun, I tried to write C/AL in Notepad, FAR Manager, Eclipse etc... and I found that I make a LOT more typos than in the C/AL editor. What can be secret? Maybe that the fonts are large and have high contrast shapes and therefore they are more visible than in most applications?

Waldo · 2006-08-07

Just for fun, I tried to write C/AL in Notepad, FAR Manager, Eclipse etc...

You've got waaaaayy to much free time, man

mel_sadek · 2006-11-05

DeSp,

The NAV 5.0 all of us are talking about has now moved to NAV 5.1. A business decision was made so that the transition period for all involved can be made smoother.

The role-based client that you mentioned will be available from NAV 5.1 onwards. NAV 5.1 is slated for Q4 2007.

However, NAV 5.0 will have the exact same C/SIDE experience as 4.0, and will still use C/AL as well, but with a few extra features (nothing significant to speak of). In fact, C/AL will not be removed from either Wave 1 or Wave 2, and will most likely be a part of NAV 6.0 as well. The reason behind it is that Microsoft does not want to alienate all their loyal partners who's bread and butter is C/AL development, and who's forte is not in programming using VS.NET (specifically C#). In fact, Mogens specifically stated that he does not partners to go and program through VS. In the future, we *may* use a tool similar to VS, however currently there are no plans for this just yet. As of now, the ONLY reason to use Visual Studio with NAV 5.1 is to compile Pages.

To sum up, NAV 5.0 will be more like a large service pack on NAV 4.0, plus the addition of the Page object, and a very nice form export feature to Word and Excel. C/AL will play a major role in NAV for at least another year to come.

janpieter · 2007-02-22

mel_sadek wrote:

DeSp,

The NAV 5.0 all of us are talking about has now moved to NAV 5.1. A business decision was made so that the transition period for all involved can be made smoother.

The role-based client that you mentioned will be available from NAV 5.1 onwards. NAV 5.1 is slated for Q4 2007.

However, NAV 5.0 will have the exact same C/SIDE experience as 4.0, and will still use C/AL as well, but with a few extra features (nothing significant to speak of). In fact, C/AL will not be removed from either Wave 1 or Wave 2, and will most likely be a part of NAV 6.0 as well. The reason behind it is that Microsoft does not want to alienate all their loyal partners who's bread and butter is C/AL development, and who's forte is not in programming using VS.NET (specifically C#). In fact, Mogens specifically stated that he does not partners to go and program through VS. In the future, we *may* use a tool similar to VS, however currently there are no plans for this just yet. As of now, the ONLY reason to use Visual Studio with NAV 5.1 is to compile Pages.

To sum up, NAV 5.0 will be more like a large service pack on NAV 4.0, plus the addition of the Page object, and a very nice form export feature to Word and Excel. C/AL will play a major role in NAV for at least another year to come.

But there must be c# functionality in 5.1. At a demo i saw a menu option that said "compile (or convert? dont remember exactly) to c#".

kine · 2007-02-22

It is just "compile" functionality, which will create the DLL... and this is done through C#....

DenSter · 2007-02-23

There will be no C# in 5.1. Development will be done in C/AL, the same editor we use now. The screenshot you saw was a development build that translated C/AL to C# so the developer could import it into Visual Studio manually and compile it there. When we get it, NAV will take C/AL code, translate it to C# and compile it to managed assemblies all behind the scenes. We are not supposed to ever see the actual C# code.

janpieter · 2007-02-23

DenSter wrote:

There will be no C# in 5.1. Development will be done in C/AL, the same editor we use now. The screenshot you saw was a development build that translated C/AL to C# so the developer could import it into Visual Studio manually and compile it there. When we get it, NAV will take C/AL code, translate it to C# and compile it to managed assemblies all behind the scenes. We are not supposed to ever see the actual C# code.

Bummer

Alex_Chow · 2007-02-23

DeSp wrote:

Perhaps I've missed something but what is about a development environment in Nav 5?
I have seen some Nav 5 presentations with all that modern looking role-based client saying that development stiil be in C/SIDE. But what should we expect from it? Will it have any new features: code highlighting, some kind of intellisense and so on? I think it's time to give us a better IDE.

Navision is not a development language. It's a tool to configure Navision to meet the requirement of businesses.

If I was Microsoft, I wouldn't spend much resource enhancing the IDE when it's perfectly fine right now. It's designed so business analyst can translate business logic into Navision without having to become a hardcore programmer.

If you want fancy IDEs, Navision is the wrong profession for you.

pberb · 2007-02-27

This is only my speculation, but I suspect Navision's Dev Environment will be:

v5 (2007-2009) - C/SIDE compilable to c#.net that we can't see or modify
v6 (2010-2013) - C/SIDE compilable to Cw that we can see and modify in a limited manner in Sharepoint Studio
v2014 (2014-2015) - Cw that we can see and fully modify in Webput. C/SIDE is discontinued. Navision itself is merged with all other Dynamics apps into a single app simply called Business Dynamics.

Alex_Chow · 2007-02-27

pberb wrote:

Navision itself is merged with all other Dynamics apps into a single app simply called Microsoft Business Dynamics (MBD).

Don't forget that there will be multiple versions of MBD:

MBD Contractors Edition (to compete with Intuit)
MBD Small Business Edition (to compete with Peachtree)
MBD Small Enterprise Edition (To compete with Epicor)
MBD Large Enterprise Edition (to compete with SAP)

Miklos_Hollender · 2007-03-02

It's a brave thing to try to predict up till 2015

My gut feeling is that due to that spectacular disaster which is called Vista (mostly because of the DRM) by 2015 everybody will be using Mac or Ubuntu and therefore the choice of ERP systems will also be somewhat limited

davmac1 · 2007-03-02

Actually, we will all be running Google accounting on our imbedded chip implants....

David_Singleton · 2007-03-02

davmac1 wrote:

Actually, we will all be running Google accounting on our imbedded chip implants....

Finally someone that understands

Saint-Sage · 2007-03-06

I don't need a fancy IDE, but syntax highlighting, automatic indentation, highlighting of matching IF/END, FOR/END, and Intellisense would make either a programmer or buisness analyst much more productive when writing code. I don't think these things would be too much to ask out of a billion dollar industry. 8-[

DenSter · 2007-03-06

What's wrong with having to hit the space bar twice when you want to indent? You already have intellisense (F5

).

Seriously though, I honestly do not know if I would be more productive writing code if I had those features. Colors for keywords would be a big help, but I doubt that auto-indent or intellisense would be much of a productivity enhancer.

Alex_Chow · 2007-03-06

DenSter wrote:

What's wrong with having to hit the space bar twice when you want to indent? You already have intellisense (F5 ).

Seriously though, I honestly do not know if I would be more productive writing code if I had those features. Colors for keywords would be a big help, but I doubt that auto-indent or intellisense would be much of a productivity enhancer.

Not to mention that if MSFT do decide to enhance the IDE, it would run slower and crash more often.

DenSter · 2007-03-06

I don't really want a fancy editor, I would be much happier with a fancy debugger that actually works the same way that the code would run, with conditional breakpoints, and an immediate window, that you can change a variable on the fly and reset the current line of code.

naso · 2007-03-07

I don't think intellisense or a couple of nice editor features will make much difference to productivity.
I'm sure everyone would like to be able to reuse code within Navision.
With C/SIDE you can only do copy and paste if you want to use existing code.
So I would like to see concepts like inheritance and events in C/SIDE.
These will enable developers to separate their custom code from Navision base Code.
If custom code is separate from base code upgrades will be a breeze, and also there will be a lesser chance of breaking the standard functionality while creating new functionality.

Eugene · 2007-03-15

what's really makes me angry about MS is that we already have highlights in the debugger so why cant we have it in the code editor ?

ara3n · 2007-03-15

they are two different application. The debugger and the nav client.
The debugger was taken from axapta and integrated with nav.

I don't think we'll see much of a change in the classic client.

aka_USAPA · 2007-03-19

DenSter wrote:

I don't really want a fancy editor, I would be much happier with a fancy debugger that actually works the same way that the code would run, with conditional breakpoints, and an immediate window, that you can change a variable on the fly and reset the current line of code.

Amen to that, brother!

aka_USAPA · 2007-03-19

naso wrote:

With C/SIDE you can only do copy and paste if you want to use existing code.

That's not true. You can create a codeunit with functions you can reuse all over the place w/o cutting and pasting. You can also use existing functions instead of having to reinvent the wheel.

So I would like to see concepts like inheritance and events in C/SIDE.
These will enable developers to separate their custom code from Navision base Code.

Can you elaborate on that?

If custom code is separate from base code upgrades will be a breeze, and also there will be a lesser chance of breaking the standard functionality while creating new functionality.

Custom code can be saved in a custom codeunit. It will minimize comparing of objects but there is no way around it in upgrades, you will have to compare objects.

Mbad · 2007-03-21

BlackTiger wrote:

How about to learn NAV before doing any development?...

No way!

ssingla · 2007-03-21

Hmmm...
How about to learn NAV before doing any development?...

Not a bad idea :-k

Miklos_Hollender · 2007-03-28

naso,

If custom code is separate from base code upgrades will be a breeze, and also there will be a lesser chance of breaking the standard functionality while creating new functionality.

This is an illusion, because the custom and the new standard function can still collide semantically. I.e. you fix a bug this way and then they fix it that way.

Besides, advanced OO concepts such as inheritance don't play well with relational databases: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-Rel ... e_Mismatch

DenSter · 2007-03-28

Custom code builds on standard code. You're only kidding yourself when you think that any mod to the base code will make an upgrade seemless if you just separate the custom part of it.

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