Reports have always been available in NAV as a data retrieval tool. Reports are used to process and/or manipulate the data through the Insert, Modify, or Delete functions with the option of presenting the data in a formatted, printable format. Prior to NAV 2013, data selection could only be done using C/AL code or DataItem properties to filter individual tables as datasets, and to perform loops to find the data required for the purpose. Then the Query object was created with performance in mind. Instead of multiple calls to SQL to retrieve multiple datasets to then be manipulated in C/AL, Queries allow us to utilize familiar NAV tools to create advanced T-SQL queries.
An NAV developer can utilize the new Query object as a source of data both in NAV and externally. Some of the external uses of NAV Queries are as follows:
- A web service source for SOAP, OData, and OData
- Feeding data to external reporting tools...