Is anyone outthere really using Navision Attain Developers Toolkit? Are you using it for upgrades and do you have problems? I’m experiencing big problems when I do a MERGE. In the merged version the properties of the OBJECT-PROPERTIES section (Time, Date, Modified) is placed in the PROPERTIES section and marked as a conflict, where no should be. If I manually modify the new version and exits and return into NADT, then the OBJECT-PROPERTIES section is disapearing. But I can then do a manually REMERGE of the object and it will merge correctly!!! But I cannot do a manually remerge of all objects! Have anyone else experienced this problem and found a solution? Best regards, Erik P. Ernst, webmaster
We have found the following bug in NDT (version 1.00.C.183 - hotfix 1 – which is our latest version of the product). The problem is that if the Fieldname contains a bracket (like “Forename(s)”) then NDT will not pick up all objects that contain this field. We have already reported this problem back to Navision.
Akers, But are you actually using it? Except for this error, how do you like it? Best regards, Erik P. Ernst, webmaster
I haven’t had call to use it much yet (and probably won’t as I only have 2 days left at my NSC), but other developers are. I don’t think it looks to different from Impuls…but as i say i haven’t used more advanced functionality in NDT.
Yeah, NDT is a bit flaky. I used it recently for merging a third party module into an existing devleopment. It was still a pain to do but was better than the tools before. It missed quite a few changes and one object sent it into a spin that ended with a C++ exception error. I think it takes a lot of legwork (fingerwork?!) out of the process but it is not too bright and so I do not trust it to do the full job properly. After that, I have mainly used the where used function. It will get there but it might take a little while. Cheers, John
Eh, I’ve just returned from my summer vacation and the first thing that I should do is to upgrade a wide Attain 3.01 solution to 3.10 with DTK. So, not an easy landing to see that there are still problems with the DTK 1.00C after hotfix 1… Last winter I did a few upgrades from 3.01A to 3.01B (one of them had lots of modifications), and most of the time I was satisfied with the Toolkit. There were some problems and once in a while I had to do a lot of work reading through all the modified code and checking the merged version before accepting the version. And yes, there was this problem that Toolkit messed up the properties section. That happened when I used English as STX-language, when I changed to Finnish, this error did’nt exist. I suppose (=hope) that this has gone with the version upgrades. Anyway, my comment on the usefullnes of DTK is, that it is a tool which is absolutely necessary. It would be an enormous or even impossible job to merge or upgrade modified versions without it. The functionality that I mostly use is also the “Where used”-option. /Pauli
Hi Erik, I also use it a lot. I do not use it for actual automatic merging. I use it for comparing versions and I do the actual code change manually. I do that partly because I was too lazy to read the help on merging 
and also I do not feel comfortable with the idea of something automatic generating the code. I guees a reason why most people use only Replace or Skip on Importing objects. Also the most I use is the Where used for objects and fields. This saved me a lot of hassle a lot of times when as we all know the client changed his mind (the 100th time ) and I had to redo stuff. So I like it a lot … P.S. This is not related to Navision but … One great thing that I have discovered and I totally LOVE it when using NDT : if you use Win XP it has this functionality where you can actually use 2 screens with independent data on each (extending your desktop). So then I have NDT on an external monitor and Navision on the laptop screen and boy it saves a lot of tabbing. Sorry I just love this thing so much I had to share it. Regards, Cristi Nicola
Actually having split monitors with different information on each was available in windows 98 and NT 4. I also heard that you could get some video cards that would do this in NT ver 3.51, (but I never actually saw one). But I remember my first NT4 machine, back in 1996 with this feature, and I agree it was wonderfull. _________________________ David Singleton Navision Consultant since 1991 dmks22@comcast.net___________
I use NDT for the upgrade, but now I ignore most of the so called ‘conflicts’, knowing where I have changed the customer database and codes, that multilanguage does not translate properly the option fields, that the property ‘INPage’ of most of the fields for, e.g., the customer card is set to zero, that … But we will use NDT as a documentation-tool to archive the changes of our customer databases. Michael Edited by - Quasimodo on 2002 Aug 04 10:04:02
I haven’t used NDT for actual merging for following reasons: 1. If you use actual merge, it will merge objects w/out functional considerations which are v.important bcos Navision doesn’t understand the meaning of customization. 2.As it just copies/merges objects how can you avoid/skip the customizations which aren’t needed due to the functionality already provided in new version/not needed by a client any more? 3.If someone has gone thru’ the help for NDT they’ll agree that the whole process of compare/merge is based on object versions. So you must be pretty sure that the object versions in customer version haven’t been tampered with else you could land up in a big trouble. But I do like it and use it for Compare the versions and apply relevant customizations.(Hard but neat work I believe as i have full control on what’s changed and how it will behave with new functionality). The above solution results in less problems/troubleshooting later. Regards
I am using the NDT 1.00.C product and am completely frustrated. I tried to use the product to generate a simple printed list of changes; I ended up with various Access Violation errors. I also tried to use the Merge function; after 35 objects the NDT began consuming RAM endlessly until Windows XP finally crashed. (NDT had consumed 280 Mb of RAM, along with another 240 Mb of swap space prior to the crash) I agree with the above comments; this is an absolutely necessary tool. Why a tool such as this, in nearly perfect working order, has not be demanded by the channel I cannot say. I do hope that with the additional resources Microsoft can bring to the table that immediate attention is paid to tools that facilitate easier upgrades. By the way, if anyone knows when to expect the next release of the tool, I would love to hear about it.
I think they have a new version 1.01 which connects to a database directly & update. Works with 3.60 version. But not tried yet. Reg. the consumption of RAM/resouces, me too surprised at the resources it requires just to import the objects into database. With MS take-over, i think we should look forward to new/better Tools to do the required job. Why not integrate many of the differen tools provided to help the developer community? There are advantages/disadvantages of above but I welcome such a tool. Reg Upgrade Tools, i think we need a separate forum to discuss the loopholes in it. I’m not happy with the way they work. (Diff. Objects/Version/Service Packs but still existing troubles?) I hope they’ll do better in this area. Regards
I have had my own negative experiences, with trying to extract custom code written in WW version that was imported into the US version. The compare screen was lit as a christmas tree, every multi-language caption was highlited as a change. Is there a way to disable these highlights for certain Navision keywords? E.g. if the date or modified flag have changed, but the code has not, I do NOT want to even see the object in the list. Same - if the caption text is different, but logic is the same, I may not be interested in such thing 9 times out of 10. What a nightmare. On a positive note, I found it extremely useful in maintaining “generations” of the code, especially when you have multiple developers working on the code. Before diving in, a new “version” is imported to see what everyone else did. Overall mark on 1 to 10 scale - 6. A lot more to be desired. Alex
People over here are using it … a lot of the time. It depends of the customer basically (eg European customers based in Germany with local modifications for Belgium, Holland, …). When you have 3 parties doing development it is a good tool to have. You have to be carefull that’s true and it is not bugfree. But without it , … it would be a nightmare. Reports and forms are a pain to merge since small changes results in “highlights”. For tables and codeunits it’s good. - it sometimes has difficulties with comments written in the description part of a field in a table design. - sometimes object id numbering kind off fails - reports can become scattered if sections have been added and so on There is room for improvement but in general people here are happy they have the tool.