I’m new to developing with NAV and am hoping someone can point me in the right direction to get started.
So far I’ve installed NAV 6.0 (default installation options therefore native database I assume) and the SDK. Now I’m looking at setting up a test application in Visual Basic 2005 that connects to NAV, checks for the existence of a customer, creates a new customer and then disconnects.
There is so much documentation available that it’s a little overwhelming but I can’t find any example code that I can review. I don’t want to change any of the objects, screens or reports within NAV, just exchange data. Ultimately I’ll be sending across Customers, Suppliers, Sales Invoices, Purchase Invoices and Journals. I’ll also be storing their unique identifiers in my application so that I can look them back up in NAV again at some arbitrary point in the future.
Also, would there be any differences in code if NAV had been installed using SQL Server as a back-end database instead of a native database?
Hope you can help a beginner get started.
Thanks in advance for any replies,
Frantic_Orange.
You can do this using web services. You can create and publish Web Services in NAV and consume it in your VB application.
NAV Native database does not support web services as such. Though it is possible to achieve this with the help of NAS (Navision Application Server) and some external DLLs, you can consider upgrading to SQL to take full advantage of the integration capabilities of NAV 6.0.
I figured out how to create and publish Web Services in NAV and use them in a VB app. However, I’m looking for a solution that would work with both SQL Server and Native database formats. My application will not be complicated at all and only involves simple data exchange with no screens. Once my application is working with Web Services, which it almost is, how would I go about adapting it to work with NAV’s native database format?
I suppose an alternative would be to suggest my clients upgrade to SQL Server, as you suggested. Is this a relatively straightforward and common practice with no complications?
Theoretically it is just take the backup from NAV native and create a new database on sql server and restore the backup taken earlier, but practically it has lot more to do.
There are tools from Microsoft which takes care of date prior to (I think year 1773 or so, as SQL doesn’t support that) and things related to sorting.
One needs to do tuning for SQL Server option, otherwise the performance will degrade drastically.
I suggest reading the upgradetool kit from microsoft, which has chapter for Migration to SQL Server option, this can be downloaded from partnersource and is perhaps available on this website’s download section also.
Hi - could you perhaps provide some more detail on what’s involved with that suggestion. Would the external DLLs be something I would have to create or are they standard libraries available for download?