Reports have always been available in Business Central 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. In older versions, data selection could only be done using AL code or DataItem properties to filter individual tables as datasets, and to perform loops to find the data that's required for the purpose. Then, the query object was created with performance in mind. Instead of multiple calls to SQL to retrieve multiple datasets which would then be manipulated in AL, Queries allow us to utilize familiar Business Central tools to create advanced T-SQL queries.
A Business Central developer can utilize the new query object as a source of data both in Business Central and externally. Some of the external uses of Business Central queries are as follows:
- A web service source for SOAP and OData
- Feeding data to external reporting...