Book Image

Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009

Book Image

Programming Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009

Overview of this book

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a well established Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, part of the Microsoft Dynamics family. Dynamics NAV is installed worldwide, with well over one million users. Version 2009 contains many major new features and structures, requiring even experienced Dynamics NAV developers to refresh their NAV development knowledge. Renowned for its challenging learning curve, Dynamics NAV is a complex piece of software with a unique design structure. For developers learning to modify or enhance Dynamics NAV for vital business purposes, the task can sometimes be intimidating. This book is an in-depth step-by-step guide to programming NAV, designed to ease you through the complexities of NAV application development. You will learn the skills and develop the confidence to tackle your own critical NAV applications. This book will act as your experienced NAV programming mentor, helping you to become productive as a NAV developer much more quickly. NAV development is quite complex, with a steep learning curve. This book makes it easy for you. From basic NAV terminology and concept definitions, through the essential building blocks of NAV data structure and objects, you will gain an understanding of the fundamental underlying concepts of NAV. You will learn practical details about NAV object construction and the tools available, including table, page, and report design. You will learn how to use NAV's tools to effectively navigate through the various features of objects, including properties, triggers, and C/AL code, and receive practical guidance on ways to develop and test in the unique NAV C/SIDE development environment. Extensive guidance on software design for NAV is provided along with tips for efficient design of new NAV applications or enhancing existing applications. With its comprehensive collection of NAV information and distillation of years of NAV development experience, this book is not only designed to help you learn, but to act as a reference as well.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Programming Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV 2009
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
Foreword
Preface
Index

Into the future...


As we've gone through our study of NAV 2009, you have seen a number of instances where Microsoft tools outside of the C/AL-C/SIDE environment have become an integral and necessary part of the NAV toolset. An immediately obvious example is the Visual Studio Report Designer layout tool. The second obvious example is the C# language. While it's not necessary to learn C# to development complete and complex application enhancements for NAV, it will certainly prove to be handy for a number of tasks. Examples of some C# oriented tasks are:

  • Debugging in Visual Studio

  • Creating new Client Add-ins

  • Creating web services consuming code

The future, the direction of the Microsoft Dynamics NAV product is obviously moving away from the insular, self-contained approach of the past. Product development changes are taking us down twin paths of both being more integrated with the Microsoft family of products and being a more open system. Here are a few changes that one might predict for Dynamics...