Direction of Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV Statement of Direction – April 2010

Microsoft has now announced that NAV is going to support for Unicode with the release of Dynamics NAV "7", which will be released next year - 2011. This will also mean that we are finally going to say goodbye to Navision's native database, which otherwise have served very well basically since the release of the first DOS version of Navision in 1987. It is a goodbye to this REALLY GREAT & SUPER STABLE database.

Unicode has been too much of a worry to the average Navision customer. But for international customers, who have been working with many different countries in the same database, then it's going to be a great help.

NAV "7" will also be another goodbye. With the release of NAV “7”, "Forms" are also going to be disappeared. "Forms" have been the data presentation object until NAV 2009; however with the introduction of the “Role Tailored Client” - “RTC”, it is now the "Pages" which is providing the data presentation to the user. The "Forms" are still used in the Classic Client, but now with the removal of the "Forms" then the typical NAV user will no longer be able to use the Classic Client. (Fortunately) Developers will still have to use the Classic Client, until new development tools will be available in the “Role Tailored Client” with NAV "8" in 2013.

Future of NAV Development Environment

The C/SIDE development environment is going to be replaced from Classic Client to RTC. As you know, still we have to depend on the NAV Classic Client for making any customization, even though we do the implementation in RTC, but this structure is going to replace with the upcoming versions of Dynamics NAV. Some of the highlights would be as follows;

1. No Object Designer! Simple. This will be replaced with Designer Home Center; it will be another role center which allows developers/consultants to make any changes to the standard objects of the application.

2. Page Designer will be replaced with another page where it will allow you to proceed with your table customizations. This feature will be brought into the other object types as well.

3. In the Object List, developer will find the all objects including data about where they used and information about the usage.



4. No Visual Studio! Own simple editor for making all changes in Code Units.



5. The structure of the Editor would be more towards to the look & feel of the Visual Studio. For example the Symbol menu is to be replaced; any parameter that you define will be available in the top of the code lines.

To be continued …

Source:
www.dynamicsuser.net/blogs/kine