I am looking into the Navision product line for an account of mine. They currently operate their back office operation on proprietary software on an RS6000. They have a frontend ERP/e-commerce application that is SQL Server based and runs on Windows 2000. At this time, we are looking at different applications to replace their backend software. Does this product provide a flexible ODBC application to provide integration to another machine running a SQL Server e-commerce on Windows 2000? Is Navision structured in a workable format or is it complicated and difficlut to work with in this area? Thank you for any assistance. I would rather hear about the realities before talking to a sales representative. Thank you.
I’ve been using and developing with Navision for just over 3 years and have been a software developer for 25 years. Navision is easy to use and customize. In fact that is quite an understatement. As an accounting package it is the best I’ve ever worked with for ease of use and customization. I have found that is why it has such a large user population world wide. As for web interface - Navision makes it very easy to export data with little effort via ODBC and a tool called dataports. Navision also allows you to import data with very little effort via dataports. However, I’m not clear on putting data into Navision in real-time on the web. Also, you would have to do some level of development to get data into Navision in ways other than through their client software or via dataports. The good news is Navision and their partners have many tools to accomplish this. Our company is looking at web interfaces for users to enter data to Navision so, I’ll leave it to others to address that part of your question. As for the rest, Navision makes it pretty simple. Yours in Software, /m
Without knowing more details on what you are trying to do, it’s kind of harsh to give an advice. Navision is a full-blown ERP package itself and you may want to use more of it than just being the “back-end”. However, when it comes to interfacing and flexibility, Navision has proven to be excellent. On-line or off-line. Incoming or outgoing. Native or SQL. Name it - and it has been done already. To give an example: One of our customers is serving a world-wide operating multi-billion company. Navision is truly in the mid of their operations, having various interfaces for data-synchronization with SAP, Commerce One and Oracle applications, getting orders in trough a large-scale webordering tool running on Oracle, and exporting consolidated data to the corporate finance IBM AS400 system and Chase electronic banking. Currently the system is upgraded to Attain to be prepared for processing high-volume transactions (estimate: about 10 million per year) from yet another web-system. Over the past years we did build a reputation here of Navision being the most versatile and flexible back-office system, allowing the company to expand their services. Interfacing can be by direct database linking (ODBC), by website linking (i.e. from Java using a JDBC - ODBC bridge), using SQL Stored Procedures (if running on SQL, of course), flat ASCII-file exchange, or XML based data-exchange. In short: there’s not much you can’t do 
Although I can understand your hesitation against talking with “just a” sales-rep, it is highly recommended to select your Navision partner (Solution Center) with some care. You should look at their track-record, knowledge on other systems than Navision alone, experience in large-scale implementations, amongst others. John