Hi, One of our prospects wants us to integrate Navision 3.60 with his application, which runs on DOS and database is Pascal family modular 10 database, where all the files are stored as .LDBs. Has anyone done such integration, if so please let us know. Regards Jyothi Mohan.
Not done, but an idea that may work: write a DLL to encapsulate your pascal database with some statements for opening, reading and so on then register the DLL to your windows Now you can use this DLL in Navision as automation server. This is all a hard thing to do
I suppose that he doesn’t need a full integration… Usually, you only need a few information, like the customer list, invoices, items, etc. You don’t need to integrate with all the tables… You will first have to define what data will be exchanged by the 2 applications, and which application is the master, for every field exchanged. Then, you will have to find the best way to get the data (csv exports, print txt reports and read from it, etc.)
I you say that it’s one of your prospect, and if the other application is quite basic, the best thing to do could be to show how strong Navision is to integrate with other applications (do a quick demo), and after that, to explain how easy and cheap it is to replace the old system by Navision, with minimum customizations!
David’s suggestion is quite practical - not only on the integration subject but also on the sales side… [:)]
Then we should first find out what the pascal database is doing ! I had to do an interaction between navision and siemens s7 system. It was poor ! In the end the programmer of the s7 system wrote the data in csv-style files and applikation server was sheduled to read the data.
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Originally posted by iammicky
Then we should first find out what the pascal database is doing ! I had to do an interaction between navision and siemens s7 system. It was poor ! In the end the programmer of the s7 system wrote the data in csv-style files and applikation server was sheduled to read the data.
I don’t see any problem of using a csv file + NAS to do an integration. Sometimes it’s very effective and it’s a very cheap solution. I agree with you that you have to know what the Pascal based system is doing that Navision can’t handle. The first question is always: “What do I need to get from the other system, and what do I need to send back”? Most of the time, a periodic processing will do the job (ex: import every 20 minutes). Usually, the limits comes when the other system is not designed to receive some data. On the Navision side, we have incredible import/export capabilities, a good ODBC driver and C/FRONT for more robust integrations. We can even read binary files, which means that we could even read a table stored in a binary file, if we know the structure! On your situation Jyothi, you have to know what data you will need to exchange, and what are the export/import capabilities of the other system? Also, if you cannot access the system with an ODBC driver, and if there is no existing process to create flat files, maybe an experienced programmer could create a batch file to extract the fields you need in few hours… maybe he can do the same to update the tables!
Hi Guys, Thanks for the responses. I dont need a full integration with the old system,we need to integrate a part of it (restricted to customer interaction). We are currently selling the idea of replacing the old system with Navision which will also be good from the sales point of view. Regards Jyothi Mohan