Quality Assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions: Verifying Dynamics AX customization to the Microsoft IBI Standards

620 Pages·2008·18.72 MB·English

by  Anil Kumar Gupta

Programming Microsoft®
Dynamics™ NAV 2009
Develop and maintain high performance NAV
applications to meet changing business needs with
improved agility and enhanced flexibility
David Studebaker
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Programming Microsoft® Dynamics™™ NNNAAAVVV 222000000999
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
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First published: November 2009
Production Reference: 1271009
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Olton
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ISBN 978-1-847196-52-1
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Cover Image by Faiz Fattohi ([email protected])
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
David Studebaker Gagandeep Singh
Reviewers Project Team Leader
Mark J. Brummel Lata Basantani
Steven Renders
Project Coordinator
Joel Goveya
Acquisition Editor
Douglas Paterson
Proofreaders
Claire Cresswell-Lane
Development Editor
Ved Prakash Jha Erica Mukherjee
Technical Editors Graphics
Aanchal Kumar Nilesh Mohite
Charumathi Sankaran
Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Copy Editor
Sanchari Mukherjee
Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
Indexer
Rekha Nair
About the Author
David Studebaker is Chief Technical Officer and the owner of Liberty Grove
Software, Inc., with his partner Karen Studebaker. Liberty Grove Software, a
Microsoft Partner, provides development, consulting, training, and upgrade services
for Microsoft Dynamics NAV resellers and firms using Dynamics NAV internally.
David has been recognized by Microsoft as a Certified Professional for NAV in all
areas—Development, Applications, and Installation & Configuration. He has been
honored as a Lead Certified Microsoft Trainer for NAV. He has been programming
since 1962 and developing in C/AL since 1996. David has been an active participant
in each step of computing technology—from the early mainframes to today's
technology, from binary assembly language coding to today's C/AL and C#.
David's special achievements include the development of the very first production
SPOOLing system in 1967. Application areas in which David has worked include
manufacturing, distribution, retail, engineering, general accounting, association
management, professional services billing, distribution/inventory management,
freight carriage, data collection, and production management among others.
David has had a wide range of development, consulting, sales, and management
roles throughout his career. He has been partner or owner and manager of several
software development businesses, while always maintaining a significant role as a
business applications developer.
David has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and an MBA
from the University of Chicago. He has been writing for publication since his
undergraduate college days. David has been a member of the Association for
Computing Machinery since 1963 and was a founding officer of two local chapters
of the ACM.
Acknowledgement
I would like to especially thank my partner in life and at work, Karen Studebaker,
for her unflagging support and encouragement in all ways since those early days
at Purdue. No one could have a more wonderful partner or spouse. I would like to
acknowledge the guidance and love that I received from my parents as well as the
enthusiastic support and love of my wonderful children and other family members.
Finally, though there are far too many individuals to list, whatever I have been able
to accomplish would not have been possible without the help of many, many friends,
mentors, and associates along the way. Life would be very poor without all the kind
and generous folks I have met. I also wish to thank the great people at Microsoft and
Packt who assisted me with their contributions and advice throughout the creation of
this book. May you enjoy this book and find it useful.
A special thanks to these helpful people at Microsoft:
Microsoft Technical Reviewers:
Overall Coordination—Michael Nielsen, Director of Engineering, Microsoft
Dynamics NAV.
Chapter 1: A Short Tour through NAV 2009 - Esben Nyhuus Kristoffersen
Chapter 2: Tables - Thomas Hejlsberg
Chapter 3: Data Types and Fields for Data Storage and Processing - Thomas Hejlsberg
Chapter 4: Pages—Tools for Data Display - Esben Nyhuus Kristoffersen
Chapter 5: Reports - Yuri Belenky
Chapter 6: Introduction to C/SIDE and C/AL - Lars Hammer
Chapter 7: Intermediate C/AL - Lars Hammer
Chapter 8: Advanced NAV Development Tools - Lars Hammer, Hans Kierulff
Chapter 9: Extend, Integrate, and Design—into the Future - Christian Abeln,
Bardur Knudsen
Dynamics NAV Help documentation: Paul Chapman, Dynamics NAV 2009
Documentation Manager, and his team, including Jill Frank, Søren Groes-Petersen,
John Swymer, and Bob Papsdorf
Dynamics NAV UX Guide: Hans Roed Mark, UX Manager, Microsoft Dynamics User
Experience Team
About the Reviewers
Mark J. Brummel is an all-round Microsoft Dynamics NAV specialist. He started
in 1997 as an end user but quickly moved to the other side of the table. During
ten years, he has worked for resellers where designing and maintaining add-on
systems was his specialization. Some of these add-on systems exceed the standard
product where it comes to size and complexity. In addition, coaching colleagues
and troubleshooting 'impossible' problems is his passion and part of day to day
work. Mark has trained most of the experienced NAV developers for the NAV 2009
product in The Netherlands and Belgium. Today he is working freelance, is hired by
almost every NAV reseller in the Benelux area, and is also frequently asked to help
out in escalated implementations by end users. Mark is an associate in the Liberty
Grove Software network and a business partner of SQL Perform Benelux. Mark was
the first to use the NAV 2009 (CTP3) product in a production system feeding back
valuable information to Microsoft.
A special project and passion is performance tuning of the Dynamics NAV product
on SQL Server. Since 2007, he is involved in the development of the 'SQL Perform
Tools'. A specialist's toolset which allows both trend and escalation analysis of key
elements for systems speed. As a unique specialist, he has done break-through
research in improving the performance of Dynamics NAV on SQL Server.
In his free time, Mark maintains his blog on www.brummelds.com. This blog contains
a wide range of articles about both the Microsoft Dynamics NAV and SQL Server
product. He is also a frequent speaker at Microsoft events. In 2006, Mark was
rewarded by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional award for his contribution
to the online and offline communities. In 2007, he also reviewed Programming
Microsoft® Dynamics™ NAV.
Steven Renders is a Microsoft Certified Trainer in Microsoft Dynamics NAV. He
has more than 12 years of business and technical experience. He joined Plataan in
2006, where he provides training and consultancy focused on Microsoft Dynamics
NAV development, Microsoft SQL Server, Business Intelligence solutions, Microsoft
SQL Server Reporting Services, and Database Performance Tuning. He is also an
expert on Dynamics NAV 2009, on which he has already delivered many training
sessions. Steven has also developed content for Microsoft Learning.
Foreword
Since the first version of Dynamics NAV, simplicity has always been the biggest asset
of the product, and the goal has always been that it should be easy to learn, easy to
use, and easy to develop. For the NAV developers, this has been accomplished by
limiting the number of concepts they have to learn.
The first is to use the concepts which are well known from real life, for example,
Form, Page, Table, and Report. The next is to introduce a programming language
C/AL, which is targeted at writing business logic and not device drivers. The
third is to add an integrated development environment, which removes the need
for "plumbing" logic, which typically pollutes the code in a normal development
environment. The fourth is to add automatic transaction and error handling, which
saves the developers a lot of time since they don't have to write "clean up" code. The
fifth and probably most important, is to reuse code constructs across the application,
so that once you have learned one subsystem, it is easy to understand and master the
rest. The latter is the secret sauce of NAV and what makes it possible to master doing
customization across the whole NAV application.
This is, in very few words, what David's book is all about and what Dynamics NAV
is all about.
Michael Nielsen,
Director of Engineering,
Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: A Short Tour through NAV 2009 13
NAV 2009: An ERP system 14
Financial Management 16
Manufacturing 16
Supply Chain Management (SCM) 17
Business intelligence and reporting 18
Relationship Management (RM) 18
Human Resource management 19
Project management 19
Significant changes in NAV 2009 19
Two-tier versus three-tier 20
Role Tailored Client 21
SSRS-compatible report viewer 21
Web services 21
NAV 2009: A set of building blocks and development tools 21
NAV object types 22
The C/SIDE Integrated Development Environment 22
Object Designer tool icons 24
NAV object and system elements 25
NAV functional terminology 28
User interfaces 29
An introduction to development 31
Our scenario for development exercises 31
Getting started with application design 32
Application tables 32
Designing a simple table 32
Creating a simple table 33
Field numbering 34