With a few exceptions, all the development for NAV 2015 applications takes place within the C/SIDE environment. Exceptions include the use of SQL Server Report Builder (or Visual Studio) for reporting (as we saw in Chapter 5, Queries and Reports), plus work we might do in a .NET language to create compatible add-ins. While it is possible to do development using a text editor, it is only appropriate for special cases of modifications to existing objects by an advanced developer.

As an Integrated Development Environment, C/SIDE provides us with a reasonably full set of tools for our C/AL development work. While C/SIDE is not nearly as fully featured as Microsoft's Visual Studio, it is not intended to be a general purpose "one size fits all" development toolkit. Most importantly, C/SIDE and C/AL are designed for NAV compatible business applications software development with many features and functions specifically designed for business applications work.

C/SIDE includes a...