February 2008

Native vs. SQL: The Evolution

by Vjekoslav Babic on February 29, 2008

One of the choices a customer interested in Microsoft Dynamics NAV must definitely make is the choice of the database platform. With NAV, there are two possible options: so called native database server, which is not really officially called that (the official name is Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server), and Microsoft SQL Server.

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Monkey policy

by Vjekoslav Babic on February 28, 2008

Policies are sacrosanct. Every company has them, and when implementing ERP systems policies do come in the way. That’s the way we do it ’round here since forever, is heard rather frequently, but a simple question why can leave a big question mark hang unanswered.

There was an experiment…

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Code of coding 4: Die, hard(coding) 2

by Vjekoslav Babic on February 27, 2008

In Croatia, most of roads resemble battlefields. They are so full of holes and patches from all kinds of repairs over time, that they have to re-pave them every five years or so. It is an awful waste of taxpayer’s money, and makes you wish for the world of Jennifer Government to come be. Anyway, as soon as they re-pave the roads, not a week usually passes before they come again, with jackhammers and heavy machinery of all sorts, and start drilling away, blocking the road in process and causing mass-frustration, just because some wacko has suddenly remembered that it would be nice idea to pass the optic cable underneath, or some valve started leaking.

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Code of coding 3: Die, hard(coding)!

by Vjekoslav Babic on February 26, 2008

Development is an important phase of implementation of a highly-customizable ERP system, such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV, and that’s why I put a lot of emphasis on development, specifically on coding part of it. I’ve tried to cover a few do’s and don’ts of coding, but so far I’ve left one of my favorite clay pigeons out: hardcoding.

If you want me to define hardcoding, I’d probably put it something like this: hardcoding is the ugliest possible form of laziness, incompetence, ignorance, indifference, carelessness, or any combination of the five, which in short-term makes my toenails curl up, and long-term leads to poor and unmaintainable systems and unhappy customers.

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Version management

by Vjekoslav Babic on February 21, 2008

When I posted my last relevant post on this blog, I’ve got a comment from infonote (a visitor) how bad it was that Microsoft Dynamics NAV can’t use a versioning system. Well, as the matter of fact, it can.

One of the nice things in NAV is that at any given moment, the development environment is just a Shift+F12 away. When you are a single developer on your team or on a project, this keypress is your best friend. But if there are other people on your team pressing it with an agenda, then this keypress might as well be a combination made in hell.

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Users never mess with the system

February 18, 2008

I’m still in Vegas, and this city is crazy. But it’s funny, us people in IT have a thing or two to learn from these people in gambling business. We have all been hearing from our customers how they want their systems reliable, available, and so. Well, what I’ve been seeing here for the past [...]

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What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas

February 16, 2008

Although I really planned, and I really wanted to, I don’t think I am going to post anything useful in next few days. I spent last week in Seattle, attending TechReady conference, and now I am taking three days off – in Las Vegas. As the matter of fact, I’ve just arrived, have a semi-splendid [...]

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Code of coding 2: Documenting changes

February 15, 2008

Few days ago, when I wrote about coding, I didn’t have a slightest idea that at the same time, at the completely opposite part of the globe, Dave was blogging almost about the same thing. It is interesting to know that I am not the only one out there actually worying about code, and how [...]

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Manufacturing quickie

February 14, 2008

Today, I got an e-mail from a reader of this blog, who asked me to help them with an actual problem on a project. Their customer is a small manufacturing customer in textile vertical. Whenever they calculate consumption, quantities for certain items get rounded to full numbers. Since the items are usually textile, measured in meters, a [...]

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Code of coding

February 13, 2008

Code is boring. It is geeky. And it’s ugly, too. In C/AL it is especially ugly. While contemporary development tools come with all sort of gizmos which make coding easier, such as color-coding, auto-completion, refactoring, etc., C/AL editor seems like having awaken from a thousand-year sleep. Take a look at the color coding: there is none. Or there [...]

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Why doesn't my filter work?

February 10, 2008

Today I got a comment from another soul out there, spending their time blogging about Microsoft Dynamics NAV. I’ve immediately put the link to my blogroll, and it really deserves it, because it is the best blog on the topic I’ve seen so far. Few days back, on that blog, there was a post about [...]

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