When customizing Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you can use proven concepts in the application. These proven concepts are called design patterns. There are three types of design patterns.
Architectural patterns are the main data processes and table structures. Examples are master data, singleton tables, documents, and posting and archiving processes.
Although this is the name that people use for the entire concept, design patterns are reusable elements to solve specific problems, such as number series and blocked entity.
Different development techniques are called implementation patterns. Examples are proxy, façade, temporary datasets, and hooks.
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are reusable blocks of code that generally do not change. They are as important to know to work with Dynamics NAV as .NET libraries are to work in C#. Within Microsoft Dynamics NAV, we have several building blocks that are reused but not changed. Examples are address formatting and the navigate page.