well, I’m somewhat confused. As you might know, with 5.0SP1 MS has introduced several “enhancements” regarding NAV/SQL performance. Just to name some:
VSIFT
Cursor Preparation
Buffered Inserts
Changed Cursor types
etc.
Some/Most/Any (?) of those features is supposed to be in NAV 2009, too. Some might come up with future updates. But due to the “patchwork” of updates etc. I’m not sure which features/improvements are actually included in which version … [8-)]
Which version is - currently - technically more advanced?
Well, of course I tried to find something on Partner Source etc., but actually I got even more confused … and I don’t really want to adress this to MS support or anything, as I guess the answer would always be “the most recent version is the best”, but I’d like to know what’s REALLY state-of-the-art …
As far as I could see it, there are frequently updates for 5.0 SP1 with several fixes and enhancements. Some of these patches have been released after release of 2009, so I guess 5.0SP1+ includes fixes/improvements which are not yet included in 2009. Or are they?
Also, when reading recent BLOGs of the “NAV Sustained Engineering Team” - e.g. about “Cursor Types” - they refer to NAV 5.0 (and even NAV 4.0) but not to 2009 …
My current opinion is (was?) this:
The business logic / application / code of 5.0SP1 and 2009 are nearly identical (except for “Pages” etc.)
NAV 2009 Classic Client (CC) used same technology as 5.0SP1; but meanwhile 5.0SP1 has been enhanced
NAV 2009 Role Tailored Client (RTC) uses Service Tier, but communication between ST and SQL Server is same as with CC
Hence, application is identical, technology is similar, but 5.0SP1 is somewhat ahead …
In fact Stryk I think that you’re asking a very interesting question. At least I would love to hear the answer/comments to this one as well, as I am working for a company currently in the process of upgrading to NAV 5.0 SP1.
But maybe I would reword it: What’s the business case in doing an from NAV 5.0 SP1 to NAV 2009?
Yes web service is a good “GO”, and the new RTC looks great! But I really see a lot more disadvantages than advantages. Maybe it’s just my own tests, but I think the new client is slow. It’s a complete new exe, so in general I would not trust a MS product until it’s release of it’s SP1. The new RTC will require us to re-train the users and rewrite all our user guides. The page transaction tool is reported to be more or less useless, unless you spend a lot of time on it.
Erik Ernst, I would definitely go with 2009 classic. Think of it as 5.0 Sp2. As Erik Van den Berg mentioned, there are countless fixes that have occurred after 5.0 sp1 was released. The business case is 2009 classic is 1. Tons of bugs fixed 2. No upgrade needed again if you want to use 3 tiered. 3. web services. 4. newer fin/finsql executable.
So you say especially the application/objects in 2009 includes several fixes which are not implemented in 5.0SP1. Thus, if a customer is affected by functional bugs of the application then upgrading to 2009 should be considered. But how does this match the statement from MS - As on Convergence EMEA 2008 - that the applications of 5.0SP1 and 2009 are almost identical? Does this mean, both versions started with the same code base, but then fixes were only provided to 2009? I don’t want to believe this; as 5.0SP1 is a still supported version, I guess customers have a legal right to get those fixes, too …
Now assuming the application is OK, neither RTC nor Webservices are needed: is there any good reason to perform a technical upgrade to 2009?
Well, I made some application comparisons for Table 37 and Codeunit 80 between NAV 5.0 SP1 and NAV 2009 and I found a lot of bugfixes and code improvements, so I would agree with Rashed and strongly recommend in the case where you have the two options to choose NAV 2009. Even a technical upgrade may have some advantages.
As I mentioned before 2009 is basically 5.0 sp2. Between 5.0 and sp1 you had bug fixes. Same applies to 2009 and 5 sp1. I’ve ran issues and found them to be fixed in 2009. One would be RIM toolkit, and another would be GL balance by dimension. What is worse is that MS have been telling customer to upgrade to 5.0 sp1 and then upgrade to 2009. I would upgrade directly to 2009 classic and then implement RTC.
Also SP1 was released in April 30, 2008. After which they’ve been finding bugs and they have been fixing it till Nov 2008. So you have 7 months of nothing but fixing bugs that were reported by customers. They are released as KB articles, but all code have been implemented in 2009.
Technically there’s not much difference - if any? -between 5.0SP1 and 2009 (Classic Client); just a technical upgrade will not give much benefits (except webservices or RTC).
But the application of NAV 2009 is more advanced than 5.0SP1, thus this could be worth an upgrade.