I haven’t been able to start reading it directly because I have had little time because of a move (well for the moment we just cleared a part of the house…). But finally I can start reading it.

Knowing Mark personally and his work (Ok, I didn’t know he was writing a book until he had written it!), I know it must a good book. After I have devoured it, I will let you know HOW good it is!

If you want some information on it or order it :  Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 Application Design.

You can also ‘taste’ it with this free chapter “Consulting“.

As always (read as : the previous 2 years ), the event was a success!Good food, nice place, not so good weather (but we ware inside) and at least the evening of the galadinner was with quite good weather.

Here are the competitors (in winning order) and some info:

1)AGILES WORKFLOW: guiding people on how to do something (e.g. creating a new item:what has to be done?)

2)ABECON: course industry:planning, registration, …

3)EQUISIS: Zetadocs for Dynamics NAV: document management using webservices and Sharepoint

4)CENTERLINE: Right Report Writer for MS Dynamics NAVvs. integrated into RTC to create reports. (nice tool for developers, but I think it missed the goal of the competition)

5)TO-INCREASE: Dynamics cues: gives the possibility to add stacks in an easy way to a role.

6)NAVAX: NC CUBE: making cubes (seems a good tool but it completely missed the point of the competition [and indeed they finished last])

The volcano (you know who I am talking about, do you?) was the biggest fear for Directions EMEA 2010, but everything went well. The figures prove it:

year # participants

2008 308

2009 311

2010 314

Even with the economic crisis (and the volcano crisis), Directions EMEA always had more participants. There is also a prognosis: by 2108 they will have 400 participants!

Some more stats for the 3 first years:

-1000 attendees

-204 sessions

-8100 cups of coffee

-average temperature : 12°C (not that warm!)

-rain: 80% (luckily the event is INSIDE a hotel!)

The current version of “NAV metadata” is still based on that system (using EXPORTOBJECTS), but it is a first step in the right direction to have all NAV metadata readable (and hopefully also writeable) at runtime!

*why

-explore NAV application object definitions

-possible approach to reduce overhead in version

-useful to the NAV comunity? You tell us…

(My answer: YES! YES!! YES!!! YES!!! …). Let Microsoft know that you are also find it useful!!!!!

*platform for

-NDT

-…

*-export NAV

-exposed as tables

-C/AL can reach it

*overview

-prototype

-NAV application

-open to change

*dataflow: export as text and import in C/SIDE. Uses only features of NAV2009SP1.

*can be used to compute the differences between 2 versions and apply these changes to another version

*package

-container objects and modifications

-keep the base line save for reference

-create a package and then apply it on (another) baseline

*possible paths

-make available to community

-productizing DevBase

–optimize (non C/AL) DevBase import/export

–C/AL functions for compile and import (export of .fob and .html)

-support for code change

-generate cross reference info

-package+modification

–potential application modularization

-upgrade tooling

-UML-like diagramming for development

-a RTC UI

–approaching DevApp

-prototype C/AL concepts via precompilation,…

–interface

–compound data type

–design paterns

-what are your ideas?

And we had little time left, so we ran through the rest…
This link, I did catch: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/

*Windows azure=cloud services OS, server as development, services host and services management environment for Windows Azure platform. Scaleable, secure, reliable.*not intended for ERP: not written for it, licensing is not really ok for it

-productivity: RTC, action pane, search function (users love this ; there is a search function in Windows 2008/7 and I love that to instead of using the menu), user customization, save template with filters

-technology: SQL Server, WebServices, client extensibility

-time to “clean up”:

–51% replace with standard

–13% in use

–8% need to change

–28% unknown (user: I need that function and after 6 months no one uses it (or knows what it does)

-simplicity

–intuitionally

–I don’t lose the track

–user comment: I didn’t understand your roll blah blah, but I see what I have to work on every day

*value for

-services

-reduce support

-market share

-customer decision for next ERP period

-sell new license, add-on’s

-satisfied customers are the key for new business

*Q&A

-critical issues: talk with tech guys from customer because of service tier

-experience on hardware:

–native=>SQL is big step

–service tier server

*reasons to not to upgrade to RTC

-salespeople: we can’t sell ‘that’

-time to convert

-time to rethink some things

*agenda

-test features in NAV2009SP1 -test development?

*key takeaways

-new reporting capabilities

-new report designer experience

-time to get starting on RDLC report

*Dynamic report i.e. sorting and visibility toggle

*save report to PDF,Excel

*view report with text colors

*display data graphicaly

*acces NAV reports from other applications

*drill through pages and reports

Demo time:

-graphical:changes between graphs and with nice colors

-adding links to drilldown to other data like customer card

-conditional formatting

-show data level per level (select interactivily)

-expand all

-add images on report from DB, external or embedded in report

-sales dashboard (see http://blogs.msdn.com/nav/archive/2009/03/30/creating-dashboards-in-nav-2009.aspx) with drilldowns to other reports.

-matrix report (see http://blogs.msdn.com/nav/archive/2009/08/28/building-a-matrix-report-in-microsoft-dynamics-nav-2009-sp1.aspx)

-use external essemblies in .NET (Claus still needs to blog about it. Or better: he thought about blogging about it. Maybe my blogpost will make him blog about it )

The first session. It is an ISV session, so more a commercial one. All 4 sessions were ISV sessions and this seemed the most interesting one.

It is about how to take advantage of e-commerce.

*Opportunities:

-e-commerce requests growing

-customers want integrated solutions

-ONE STOP shop

-beat competition by offering NAV+e-commerce (But if all partners have this? Probably you need to be faster! Or maybe they were talking about non NAV-partners?)

-new revenues by adding e-commerce

*with SANA

-factsheets, solution highlights, reference cases

-online demo movies

-VPC to help demo’s

-Easy to demo and good looking solution

-need e-commerce expertise=>SANA will help you

-Support with implementations

*SANA software

-ISV for e-commerce for the Netherlands

-15 years for e-commerce experience

-300+ e-commerce implementations

-HQ in The Netherlands and development center in Ukraine

*Hightlights

-built for NAV 4, 5 ,2009

-supports B2B, B2C, B2X

-online order entry, quick, easy, 24/7

-my account page: pending orders and order history

-latest tech.: .NET 3.5, web services based on WCF (no message queue. I would say that is a good idea!)

-delivered with SDK (costs €0 (or $0) for parters), fully customizable

*out of the box

-Multilanguage

-multiple shops

-…

*SANA Live Connector

-fully integrated with NAV

-best solution for B2B

-real time info on pricing, stock, custom specific discount

*SANA commerce provider

-Scheduled interfaces with NAV

-best for B2C

*B2B demotime: They showed us a nice interface for B2B webshopping. 100% out of the box: configurable and with 5 languages (didn’t have time to note down which languages) and (if I got this correctly) some other languages they are working on. The customer can see his orders, discounts and items. Also a salesperson can use the interface and he can see his customers, orders and so on.

*partner program

-sales documentation and sales support

-employee training and hands-on labs

-3rd line support

-partner portal

*partner benefits

-partner margin on licenses

-partner margin on maintenance

-customer implementation

-customer support

*no costs involved to become partner and start selling

*roadmap

-new functionality

-support new NAV versions

-partner input

*SANA commerce 7.4. What’s new?

A demo to demonstrate the new things.

-it is optimized for search engines

-customer can write a review on the articles on sale or request new features

-product navigation

And here stops the first session taking notes on paper…

It started quite badly. For a lab, you need your portable and your portable needs a battery loader and this last one needs a powerplug. When we arrived in the lab, these were missing.

I have done something with webservices before. But all in NAV. This is all done in Visual Studio. A small form created in Visual Studio that consumes a page in NAV. It can be useful for people who don’t need a full-fledged NAV for their work.

Both new very well (too well) their job. After 15 minutes only 2 persons were able to follow them. After 30 minutes also those gave up. Luckily there is a good walk-through to retry everything at home.

When the second session (Client Extensibility) started after the coffeebreak (I am starting to miss the Italian coffee. Since I live in Italy, I call the ‘other’ coffee dirty water like a lot of Italians.), at least we had electricity. Just in time (actually during the break I attached my computer to load the battery a little).

Also the second session was Visual Studio based and also here difficult to follow but again there is a good walkthrough.

So, in the setup (options=>Discussion) you can put some settings to help you:

-E-mail me whenever: all on TRUE. This way,even if a spam post gets through you find it and you can delete it with some delay.

-Before a comment appears: all on TRUE: it sounds a litle like paranoia, but don’t trust anyone until proven innocent. A trick a lot of spammers use is to post an innocent comment. So you confirm to post thinking it genuine and after some time they start spamming. In the end of the post I give some indications on the comment that should trigger all your alarm-bells.

-Comment moderation : Hold a comment in queue if it contains 1 or more links. Most spams have links in it. Before I had a higher number, but I noticed that a lot of spamposts have only 1 link in it to get through this limit.

Alarmbell-triggers:

*Comments that don’a add any value to the post or that are not some question for more info should immediately trigger your alarm bells. Some examples:

-”Great post its was a terriffic read thanks for the share !”-”Good stuff it was a great read thanks for the insight !”-”Thanks for the great information it was a great read !”

and so on.*Some other hints of spamming: in general you have a link from who it came. If it is NOT an email, you can be pretty sure it is spam. An email-address is not a guarantee it is NOT spam.

Targetted to partners and partners together, Directions EMEA is still alive and kicking!

There was the Mibuso Conference to bring the forum users together with tech sessions and some fun!

But now the Mibuso Conference has evolved into the NAV TECHDAYS 2011!

Targetted to bring developers and developers together. Also leading business owners are welcome to make the developers work together to create beautiful projects!

Spread the word!

And have a look here:

We have an RSS feed : http://www.navtechdays.com/rss.asp

You can also download a brochure : http://www.navtechdays.com/dl.asp

And here is the announcement: http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=41559

Eh, what was I writing? Oh, yes, After 2 times 2008 R2 (Windows and SQL Server), now we also have a 2009 R2 (Dynamics NAV). And we are in 2010…..Waldo already blogged about 2009 R2 : NAV2009 R2 Announcement

I am very picky about beer (being Belgian!) and chocolate (again being Belgian) because we have very good quality of both (forget the Dutch beer and the Swiss chocolate).

I had to come to the Czech Republic to find Belgian chocolate!

For the rest: I really like the Czech beer! They really can compete with the Belgian beers. I already heart about the Czech beers and they made up their reputation.

Well, like Luc already wrote on this topic , my portable died. It not crashed, but it decided to go in vacation and not start anymore.

But this was only the second part.

Monday I got a new cellular (smart-) phone because my old cell had battery problems. It crashed some times but I preferred a cell with battery that crashed sometimes over a cell with battery problems. Tuesday morning all went well without crashes and I left for Prague.

Arrived at Prague, my cell started but kept crashing. One down.

Ok, no panic, no problem, I have my portable with wireless and also Skype and email and connection to mibuso.com/blogs/kriki, so I can blog.

Wednesday around noon, my portable didn’t start anymore (two down! Panic! Help!) (to save on startup-time and battery time, I use the stand-by function that works really good with Windows 2008 with VMWare server and some VM’s in it.

BTW: did I already wrote that my car didn’t start about 2 weeks ago?

I am really worried about the airplane this evening……….

If you see that by next week I don’t blog, it means the airplane had a problem….

A small thanx to my colleague Simone Fortina for lending me his portable for some minutes. Before this he made me stay at least 4 meters away from it…..
Maybe he let me because he probably noticed that I am close to getting a cold turkey. I really needed a shot of bits and bytes.

I also have some notes about sessions on my portable, so I don’t know I will see them back. But most of them I have on some old-tech information-barer called “paper”.

I also understand now that some people go around with 2 portables (I read about it on a SQL server forum. A speaker who’s portable died BEFORE his session). That is even worse.

I know Waldo wrote already some blogs but didn’t read them yet. Did he mention there were 7 Dynamics NAV MVP’s around? (and my colleague got and MVP overdose )

Not everyone knows that you can use ‘t’ in a time field to get the system time.

But do you know you can use ‘t t’ to get the current system date + time in a datetime field? The first t  is for the date and the second for the time. And you can also use ‘w t’ to have the workdate + system time.

I created  it to avoid the annoying popup in version 4.0 asking confirmation to run a program.

But I just found out that it can also be used to activate a program that is already active.

How to do it?

Very easy. You can play with the parameter “IintWindowStyle”. If you use value “1″, it doesn’t start a new instance but it calls an existing one.

There are also other values, check them out for more info.

Here is the link: Prevent comment spam

In (very) short: it is to detect badly written pages on the disk and until SQL2000 it was the best there is and you needed it in case your clustersize on disk was NOT 64KB and all nicely offsetted (well, this is another story).

In SQL2008 you can find it in database properties=>Options=>Recovery=>Page Verify.

Starting with  SQL2005, there is a new option (at least in SQL): CHECKSUM. The TORN_PAGE_DETECTION is only a subset of the CHECKSUM option.

I think you are asking now: what is he rambling about?

Well, I just read a blogpost (http://sqlserverpedia.com/blog/sql-server-2005/performance-impact-of-using-backup-checksum-in-sql-server-20052008-2/) about a backup-option in combination with the “Page Verify” options in SQL. It is more about performance-impact. But this time my interest went to the CHECKSUM-option and how it was connected to “Torn page detection” in NAV.

I just created a new DB with NAV5.0SP1 without the “Torn page detection” in NAV. In SQL, CHECKSUM is used. This is OK.

Now I change the “Torn page detection” in NAV from no to yes. Now, in SQL it has become TORN_PAGE_DETECTION. This is OK.

Now I change the “Torn page detection” in NAV from yes to no. Now, in SQL it has become NONE. This is NOT ok, because I loose all detection on it.

So if you audit a SQL-server with NAV, don’t check the flag in NAV but go directly in the SQL database properties checking the “Page Verify” option.

See also  “Understanding and Managing the suspect_pages Table” in books online.

Why has Microsoft not changed to “torn page detection”-toggle to an option “Page Verify” in NAV or removed it completely? Maybe they read my blog and remove/change it in the new version.

Lot’s of times.

Downgrading is not so easy and it can be slow.

I needed to do it some time ago (luckily NOT for production but just for some testing) and used ara3n’s tool (http://mibuso.com/blogs/ara3n/2009/12/08/baking-uptransfering-company-specific-data-through-sql-for-dynamics-nav/)

I created a new DB. Imported the objects of the original version. Created a new company it it.

Then I used ara3n’s tool.

I did have some problems with it:

-it created code for all tables (even tables with 0 records in it). And thus takes a long time to compile in SQL.

-I has some problems with table- and fieldnames that contain accented characters. It SHOULD NOT happen but in our Italian DB’s we have the problem. And I suppose also in other countries were accented characters are used have the problem.

-I didn’t want all tables. E.g. I didn’t want to take the entry tables, and the posted document tables.

After some accent-fixing, removing some tables I didn’t want. The script was ready and I ran it in SQL. After a short time (copying data from the upgraded version to the old version!), it had finished.

I opened the DB in the old version and all worked well!

The manually having to fix some things made me decide to create my own version were I filter the tables I want, using or not using marks (the form works on a temptable, so no SQL-performance problems! It may take some time to open the form).

So it can also be used to copy some (setup-)tables from 1 company to another.

You can find my version here : http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=1171.

If you find problems in it, please let me know, so I can fix them.

In short: 4.0SP1 forgot to set the index-property “Clustered” on the primary key (the default is that the primary key is clustered). The result is that the tables were heap-tables and that is (generally) bad for performance.

The fix was to put the key-property Clustered in one of the indexes. My little tool (mentioned above) does just that.

But now, this customer was different. The Clustered-property was set, BUT in SQL, the tables were NOT clustered.

I was at a customer to do an audit because they have performance problems. I did find (and fixed) some things, but this is

another story. The important thing of this blog post is the clustered-in-NAV-not-clustered-in-SQL problem.

In the first place. How did I find this out?

Some time ago, I found a little select on http://www.extremeexperts.com/sql/Scripts/TableHasClusteredIndex.aspx, adapted it to fit my needs and ran it on the customers database.

This is the script I use (not for SQL2000 because it uses a CTE [=common table expression ; I really like those!] ):

WITH table_size as ( SELECT object_name(id) AS [TableName], rowcnt AS [Rows], (dpages * 8)/1024 AS [DataSize_MB], ( (SUM(used) * 8 ) - (dpages * 8))/1024 AS [IndexSize_MB] FROM sys.sysindexes WHERE indid IN (0,1) AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, 'IsUserTable') = 1 GROUP BY id, rowcnt, reserved, dpages ), Table_clustered AS ( Select i.TABLE_NAME, Case objectProperty(object_id(i.TABLE_NAME), 'TableHasClustIndex') When 0 then 'No' When 1 then 'Yes' End as [Has Clustered Index] From INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES i Where objectProperty(object_id(i.TABLE_NAME), 'IsUserTable') = 1 ) select TC.TABLE_NAME,TS.Rows,TS.DataSize_MB,TS.IndexSize_MB from Table_clustered TC inner join table_size TS on TS.TableName = TC.TABLE_NAME where [Has Clustered Index] = 'No' order by TS.Rows desc

It shows me which tables are not clustered and how many records are in the tables, ordered by the number of records to see where the biggest problems are (I don’t care (at the moment) about 0-record-tables).

I showed it the customer, opened the table designer, went to the index properties and found out that the key-property Clustered was set on 1 of the indexes (PS: only 1 clustered index per table is possible). Strange: the NAV 4.0SP1 bug didn’t even set the clustered property…..

I took a small table, made a fob of it then I imported it again: no change.

Then I removed the clustered-toggle, saved (or better: I tried to save) but I got some error because SQL could not remove the clustered constraint from the table because it didn’t exist.

I tried something else: I created a secondary key (I only had 1 key in that table) and made that the clustered index. I saved and it worked. Then I imported the original fob. The primary key became the clustered index. But doing that for about 400 tables? Too much work.

I made a native backup, renamed the company (I was working on a test DB which had the same problem!) and checked the clustered index. Nothing changed.

I restored the native backup I made and checked the clustered index. YES! The restored company had the clustered indexes fixed because the tables for the new company are created from scratch and remember that the Clustered property is set in the NAV-object.

So, it is possible to fix it doing a backup of the company and then restoring it. Quite long, but possible for most databases.

But it does NOT fix the the DataPerCompany=No companies like the Permissions-table.

Those have to be fixed directly in SSMS (at least not 400 tables to fix anymore, but only about 10).

Open the incriminated table => Indexes => Take the primary key => right-click on it => Script Index as => Drop and create to => New Query Editor Window

It creates this code:

USE [CRONUS2009SP1W1]
GO
/****** Object: Index [CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0] Script Date: 03/18/2010 21:51:11 ******/
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.indexes WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry]') AND name = N'CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0')
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry] DROP CONSTRAINT [CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0]
GO
USE [CRONUS2009SP1W1]
GO
/****** Object: Index [CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0] Script Date: 03/18/2010 21:51:11 ******/
ALTER TABLE [dbo].[CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry] ADD CONSTRAINT [CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED
(
[Entry No_] ASC
)WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, SORT_IN_TEMPDB = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ONLINE = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [Data Filegroup 1]
GO

Change the

“ADD  CONSTRAINT [CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0] PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED” to

“ADD  CONSTRAINT [CRONUS International Ltd_$Item Ledger Entry$0] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED”

And run the script. It will create the clustered index.

Another way you can use is to create a new company in the DB. This will create the tables from scratch and also create the clustered index on them. After that you can use ara3n’s report (http://mibuso.com/blogs/ara3n/2009/12/08/baking-uptransfering-company-specific-data-through-sql-for-dynamics-nav/#comment-98) to create a script to copy all data from 1 company to the new company (BTW: I am working on my own version based on ara3n’s version but with some extra possibilities. I will publish that later as a download on Mibuso).

This report generates a script that you can open in SSMS and run. After that you can delete the original company and rename the new company to the original one.

Some advice :

-Before doing all this work, be sure to make a good backup. And remember that a backup is only good after you have been able to restore it! A backup that you can’t restore is NOT good!

-Do this when no-one (not even the NAS or webservices) is working.

One last thing: I haven’t found out what caused this in the first place. The customer told me they never have been on 4.0SP1. So if someone has an idea, write a comment.

What is this about : Microsoft stops supporting some windows versions. That means:no more free security updates (if your PC is connected to the internet, can you live without these?)

In short the following Windows versions go out of support:
-Windows 2000 Professional and Windows 2000 Server:13 July 2010
-Windows XP Service Pack 2:13 July 2010 (so best upgrade to SP3 or go directly to the newborn child Windows 7 [if possible])
-Windows Vista without service packs:13 April 2010 (so best upgrade to SP2 or go directly to the newborn child Windows 7 [if possible])

How does this connect to Navision?
I know that some customers are still on old NAV versions (2.60 and maybe older) on Windows 2000 (and maybe older. I hope not!).

If you have older NAV versions and Windows 2000, it might be a problem upgrading Windows 2000 to Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Can you still buy Windows XP or Windows Vista?) because Windows Vista and Windows 7 need at least 4.0SP3 with hotfix (also out of support…).

Some more info:http://blogs.technet.com/lifecycle/archive/2010/02/24/end-of-support-for-windows-xp-sp2-and-windows-vista-with-no-service-packs-installed.aspx

Question: Why a post about this field?

Answer: Because it can (and sooner or later) will cause performance problems.

What happened?

A colleague calls me to tell a customer has performance problems open the sales order form. But not always.

I found out that when opening the form, the form positions on the last record, it is fast and when it positions on the first record, it is slow. Sounds that it is reading the table from the current record to the last. But still : only 60000 records should not be soooo slow (about 5 seconds to open the form) on the server they have. The server is not a monster but is good enough for its workload.

Even after opening the form different times, it remains slow but all the records should be in cache.

So let’s start SQL server profiler and start tracing what’s happening. I found the query. A cursor is created (first bad sign). I hate the FIND(’=<>’)!

And indeed in the WHERE I find “No_” >= ‘…’, so it does a clustered index seek (and if I have the first record, it means it does a scan of the table). But still this doesn’t explain the 5 seconds.

THEN I see DATALENGTH(”Signature”) as a column in the SELECT. The translation for human beings is that Signature is a BLOB! What the <…BEEP…> does a BLOB field in table 36:”Sales Header” and where is it used?

After some searching (exporting all as text and using Navision Object Text Explorer (http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=205) I easily find where it is used (see the first line of this post).

Let’s change the field from BLOB to boolean (After my last adventure with webservices (http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2010/02/17/am-i-a-detective/), I don’t disable the BLOB’s anymore, but change them to boolean.

Let’s retry to open the sales order form with first and last record and all is fast again!

I never noticed this field before (neither did my colleague), so we thought it was new in NAV2009SP1.

No, it already existed in NAV500SP1 (I didn’t check NAV500). But I never had a customer with this problem. Maybe it is caused by the combination of NAV2009SP1 and SQL2008? It is the only customer I have with SQL2008 and so many records in table 36:”Sales Header”.

A remark: I checked other tables with BLOB’s in them (make a form on table “Field” and filter on Type::BLOB). Tables “G/L Account”, “Customer”, “Vendor” have the field Picture BUT I didn’t find any function to put a picture in it. Does someone know where I can find it?

Also table Item has the field.

An advice: if you have a table that is used a lot (like Item or Sales Header), change the BLOB to Boolean and if you need the BLOB anyway, best create an extra table in which to store the BLOB. Most of the time when you GET,FIND the record, you don’t need it. So why do some extra processing for DATALENGTH(”….”)? SQL Server will be grateful if you change the BLOB to Boolean.

The bad thing is: it starts at 07:45 ET-time.

That means  13:45 CET. And it stops at 23:30!

Anyway, I am following it with the moka (to make italian coffee) nearby.

Oh, yes! It is about both!

Here it comes.

The crime scene: NAV2009 classic client with NAV Jobqueus that launches a job in a Webservice and goes on with other jobs (thanks to ara3n for his blog that helped me a lot to set it up: http://mibuso.com/blogs/ara3n/2009/01/28/running-job-queue-through-nav-web-service-for-unlimited-companies/). The idea was not really using 1 NAS for multiple companies but more using 1 NAS for multiple jobs at the same moment.

The crime: Each night the same job was started through JobQueue and the webservice did receive the call and started working but never finished its work. So the job died somewhere. Was it suicide, an accident (like a bug in webservices, because when launching the job manually went without errors) or someone murdered the job (delete it’s session ID)?

Suicide was quite improbable. The job has no feelings, no Artificial Intelligence and I didn’t put any suicide logic in it (In some cases I have build suicide logic in a job!).

The big problem was that we didn’t find any tracks (except a missing finishing message). (Maybe someone murdered the job and hid the tracks?) The problem is also that webservices doesn’t write anything to the Windows eventlog in case of a MESSAGE or an ERROR.

So I decided to put some bugs (microphones, not logical errors) in the job in the form of messages to some log table (with after it a COMMIT). The job is full of COMMIT’s to avoid that it blocks too much for too long, so some extra COMMIT won’t hurt (if put in the correct places!). Also I changed the webservice call in the NAS, so the NAS waits for the end of the webservice job and if it errors out, the JobQueue receives the error and writes it in the job log.

I also set up an extra job to be run directly by the NAS as a failsafe measure. In case the webservice crashes, the NAS does the job at a later hour.

The day after: I check the JobQueue log and find the error that let the webservice crash : “Table Item has been changed by another user”. It just became a murder case! But who is the murderer? And who is so crazy to do that every night? Could we have a serial killer in our system?

First: check the item table. No track of changes. Same object datetime. I confront the text-version with the text-version on the development server : the same. Last change was 1 or 2 months ago. Strange!

And the second job, run directly by the NAS not even an hour later has no problems.

With the logs I have I can pinpoint exactly where the problem happened: “tmpItem.DELETEALL(FALSE);”.  And just before that DELETEALL, I have “tmpItem.RESET;” (Did I tell you I am a big fan of explicit initialization of variables? It never leaves doubt if a variable/temptable has a value/data or is blank/empty).

At that same point in the code, I also have some other temptables (item-related) on which I do the same action. Lets inverse the tables and restart NAS and webservices.

First night : all OK.

Second night: Jack The Ripper V2.00 strikes again! The webservice dies again with the same error-message and ON THE SAME TABLE and not on the temptables I put before tmpItem.

Probably not Jack but a bug in Webservices. But why?

So, what is so special about the item table? Something is! I disabled the field “Picture “! It is not used and we have a lot of items and by disabling it, I can get some extra performance.

But what can make the webservice say the item-table has been changed? Nothing is touching it? Or is there? Well, we have an indexrebuild each night some hours after the incriminated job. That might explain why after the restart of the NAS and webservices everything went fine the first night (restart during day. That night FIRST the job and after that the indexrebuild and then the second night : ERROR!).

So I try the deactivate the rebuild for some days. And all that time the webservice works fine!

Conclusion: An accident (a disabled BLOB in a table and a bug in webservices)! And the ‘murderer’ (the indexrebuild) takes the opportunity to murder the accident-victim, turning it into a murder case anyway!

Didn’t this sound like some detective work?

Now back to the real world!

We have to fix this problem. First idea : before the indexrebuild we stop the webservice and after the indexrebuild, we start it again. But the sysadministrator doesn’t like the idea.

Another idea : if we try to make the item table ‘normal’ again? I enable the Picture field AND CHANGE ITS TYPE TO BOOLEAN. Why Boolean? Well both BLOB and Boolean start with a B and a Boolean is small (Boolean becomes TinyInt, so the performance penalty remains small/non existent.

Done that, I enable the rebuild again and now we wait for a few days and check how it goes.

After a few days, everything is still working perfectly.

Customer happy because it works.

My company happy because we fixed it.

I happy because I learned something new.

Microsoft happy because I provided them a workaround.

Some  other links:

http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2010/01/19/sql-server-2008-r2-gets-an-official-date.aspx

 http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2010/01/sql-server-2008-r2-release-date-may-2010/

 http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/11/sql-server-2008-r2-pricing-and-feature-changes/

http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/09/sql-server-2008-r2-frequently-asked-questions/

So launching NAV (or SQL Server Management Studio) to connect to their database is impossible.

Can you connect to their database if you don’t have a remote terminal or citrix to some computer in their domain?

Yes, you can!

Microsoft has a little (sysinternals) tool (shellrunas.exe) that makes it possible.

You can download it from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc300361.aspx.

To install it, just run “Shellrunas /regnetonly”.

This adds the option “Run as different user (netonly)” under the rightmouse click on a file in explorer. So when you want to run you finsql.exe, fin.exe, Ssms.exe, … use this trick and you can use Windows-logins from your own portable even if you are NOT in your customers domain!

Backup compression is available in SQL Sever 2008 R2 Standard!  Read more

That is very good news. No more need for Enterprise version for backup compression!

This is the feature I like the most in SQL 2008!

It speeds up backups (most processors are idle anyway) and it takes less time to move the backups over the network.

-- recursive CTE to generate numbers like the NAV date table

SELECT DATEADD(DAY,-1,[The Date])
FROM DateTable
WHERE DATEADD(DAY,-1,[The Date]) >= @from
)
SELECT *
FROM DateTable
ORDER BY [The Date]
OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0)
See also the forum

It is possible to create the table with a recursive CTE (Common Table Expression).

If you want, you can also put the select into a stored procedure and use it.

This is the select:
-- recursive CTE to generate numbers like the NAV Integer table

SELECT [The Integer] - 1
FROM numbertable
WHERE [The Integer] - 1 >= @from
)
SELECT *
FROM numbertable
ORDER BY [The Integer]
OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0)

See also the forum.

The text ‘…’ in STRSUBSTNO parameter no. 1 is too long.

Surprise : Is the string I give already longer than 1024 chars? But shouldn’t I have got an error when assigning that value to my variable that I sent into STRSUBSTNO?????

I was wondering if STRSUBSTNO was still limited to 250 chars like the older versions of Navision.

So created a global variable of type text of  1024 chars.

And I run this code :

t := strsubstno(padstr(”,300,’x'),’z');

=> No error. Was the error I got in some other place. Weird….

t := strsubstno(padstr(”,1024,’x'),’z');

=> ERROR. At least I am sure it was not in some other place, but why 300 was ok?

So there is some limit. Lets search for it.

t := strsubstno(padstr(”,1000,’x'),’z');

=> ERROR

t := strsubstno(padstr(”,900,’x'),’z');

=> ERROR.

To make a long story short :

t := strsubstno(padstr(”,511,’x'),’z');

=> This works

t := strsubstno(padstr(”,512,’x'),’z');

=> ERROR.

Conclusion : If your input string in parameter 1 is longer then 511 characters, you get an error!

But why is this the case??????

Now I can understand that if you put in a string of 1024 chars and substitute something to a longer string will give an error. But why already giving an error at 512 characters?

Specially if the error would be this:

String %1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1%1 is too small for insertion of %# fields.

This error message appeared because:
No.: 1
Value: …….

Here a short explanation:

*File=>Database=>Alter=>Tab Integration=>Save license in database.

A license can be cut to be used at server level (this means the same license and the same number of users for ALL databases on the server). For example if you have a license for 5 users and you have 10 databases, ONLY 5 users can work at the same moment. In this case you CANNOT put “Save license in database” to TRUE.

A license can be cut to be used per database (you pay for this option!) (this means a different license can be used for each database on the server). For example if you have a license for 5 users and you have 10 databases, 5 users PER DATABASE can work at the same moment. In this case you MUST put “Save license in database” to TRUE, otherwise you don’t have this advantage.

In short, if you are an partner and have a server with all DB’s of your customers to work on, you need to load your developer license and you need to enable “Save license in database”. Otherwise only 5 (in my example) developers can work at the same time. With the toggle, 5 developers PER database can work.

A customer that has only 1 company does NOT need that kind of license.

If you have an international customer with 1 server and 1 DB per country, you need the “Save license in database”-possibility (granule 2020). This is needed because with a Belgian license you can’t use Italian objects.

*Some information on the buttons you find in “Tools=>License”.

-Upload: (does NOT exist on native DB!). Serves to ‘Upload’ a license in SQL. It depends on the toggle “Save license in database” if it is uploaded in the current database or in the SQL server-instance (saved in the master DB).

-Import: saves the license in the subdirectory where the finsql.exe (or fin.exe) is. This option was only useful on native when you worked on a database WITHOUT using a databaseservice. If you open a native database locally, this license is used.

-Export:  This is the opposite of the “Import” and is only useful for native working with a local database. Copies the license from the subdirectory where the finsql.exe (or fin.exe) is to a given path+name.

-Change: This serves to change the license ONLY for current client UNTIL you close the client. After this you can connect another database (SQL DB, native DB in server mode or local mode) but it will use the license you just “changed” into. When you close the client and restart it, the original license will be taken. This button is only useful for developers that have to connect to a customerdatabase and do some maintenance that the customer license does not permit.

REMEMBER to NOT leave your developer license at the customer. Some people collect stamps, others collect developer-license files!

Sometimes it is possible to do set based programming also in NAV.

I just found an example in which we can speed up something thinking in sets (1 record is also a set!) instead of iterative. The beautiful thing is: it also is valid for a native DB.

For example: we need to get (with GET or FINDFIRST) 1 record and change 1 field in it without do any testing on it. So get the record and throw some value in some field.

The classic method would be:

recTheTable.LOCKTABLE;

recTheTable.RESET;

recTheTable.SETCURRENTKEY(….);

recTheTable.SETRANGE(”Field 1″,’Value 1′);

recTheTable.SETRANGE(”Field 2″,’Value 2′);

…

IF recTheTable.FINDFIRST THEN BEGIN // or even worse would be if there are multiple records

recTheTable.”Some Field” := ‘Some Value’;

recTheTable.MODIFY(FALSE);

END;

What happens: NAV requests a record and locks it. The server gets the record and sends it to the client. The client changes it and sends it back to the server. And if there are multiple records, the server and the client start playing ping pong with the records.

Now the SET based way (this works for 0, 1 or multiple records!):

recTheTable.RESET;

recTheTable.SETCURRENTKEY(”Field 1″,”Field 2″,…);

recTheTable.SETRANGE(”Field 1″,’Value 1′);

recTheTable.SETRANGE(”Field 2″,’Value 2′);

recTheTable.MODIFYALL(”Some Field”,’Some Value’,FALSE);

What happens: NAV sends the request to the server and the server processes it. BUT the record does NOT do a trip between server and client and back again!

Of course if you need to change multiple fields in the same record, this set based method might become slower then the classic NAV method.

You can always use F6 to select the value you want but there is a shortcut:

For example: you have all your customers coded by “C000001″..”C999999″ and you know the code of the customer (e.g. “C000013″, you can put the following value into the field (E.g. “Sell-To Customer No.” in “Sales Header):”*013″. NAV will search the first value that respects the filter and put “C000013″ it in your field. If there are multiple values for the filter, NAV will take the first value it finds.

It works for the classic client. I didn’t check if it works for the RTC.

You even have to search for it (With Start =>  …) you don’t find it! You need taskmanager (or ProcessExplorer to be able to use the Stand-By function on Windows 2008 server.

Ok, but why use the Stand-by functions. I know it sounds quite illogical.

Well, it is NOT if you use it on your portable like I do. My project manager suggested me to use Windows 2008 server 64bit on my new portable (I was already thinking about doing it anyway, so he didn’t have a hard time to convince me).

I already hear you: But Windows 2008 is based on Vista-technology (Windows 2008 R2 is based on Windows 7). Yes, true, but it is definitely better than Vista! The 64-bit version of Windows 2008 uses around 450MB of memory and the 32-bit version about 380 MB both a clean install. Both are less then a clean 32-bit Vista!

The only problem I found is that I can’t use pre 4.0SP3 + hotfix NAV-versions on it. (Windows 7 has no problems with it! And neither do I because I have ’some’ VM-Ware virtual machines on it. One in which all my SQLserver-DB’s are put (Windows 2003 server) and another for older NAV-versions (Windows XP). With 4GB of memory it is not a problem at all.

The BIGGEST advantage of Windows 2008 Server is that the Stand-By function is a lot faster and better. With XP I had to reconnect to the DB each time. With Windows 2008 Server I don’t need to do that. I remain connected!

This can help you setting up Windows 2008 as a workstation : Why would someone want to use the Stand By function on Windows 2008 Server?

You even have to search for it (With Start =>  …) you don’t find it! You need taskmanager (or <a href=”http://www.sysinternals.com”>ProcessExplorer</a> to be able to use the Stand By function on Windows 2008 server.

Ok, but why use it. I know it sounds quite illogical.

Well, it is NOT if you use it on your portable like I do. My project manager suggested me to use Windows 2008 server 64bit on my new portable (I was already thinking about doing it anyway, so he didn’t have a hard time to convince me).

I already hear you: But Windows 2008 is based on Vista-technology (Windows 2008 R2 is based on Windows 7). Yes, true, but it is definitely better than Vista! The 64-bit version of Windows 2008 uses around 450MB of memory and the 32-bit version about 380 MB both a clean install. Both are less then a clean 32-bit Vista!

The only problem I found is that I can’tt use pre 4.0SP3 + hotfix NAV-versions on it. (Windows 7 has no problems with it! And neither do I because I have ’some’ VM-Ware virtual machines on it. One in which all my SQLserver-DB’s are put (Windows 2003 server) and another for older NAV-versions (Windows XP). With 4GB of memory it is not a problem at all.

The BIGGEST advantage of Windows 2008 Server is that the Stand-By function is a lot faster and better. With XP I had to reconnect to the DB each time. With Windows 2008 Server I don’t need to do that. I remain connected!

This can help you setting up Windows 2008 as a workstation.

While testing the SQL-statements between GET,FINDFIRST, FIND(’=') I noticed something VERY interesting!

In the OPTION of the select, I noticed (OPTIMIZE FOR UNKNOWN)!

Maybe you are asking why I am so exited about it?

Remember the problem with SQL2005 selecting a wrong index? This happens because of parameter-sniffing.

In short : SQL looked at the values of the query to create an execution plan. That plan was good for the query with the current values, but in general it is a very bad plan. The trick NAV used to solve it was the send the query first to SQL without values, so SQL created a plan WITHOUT knowing the values and thus selecting the best average plan for  ALL values that can be send.

The  (OPTIMIZE FOR UNKNOWN) does the same, but in the SAME select! This is a new option that was introduced with SQL2008. When I read about this I thought: if we could use this in NAV. And now it is there!

Another good reason to upgrade to SQL2008 and NAV2009 SP1 (but for NAV2009 SP1 we still have to wait a little).

I have noticed too many times that a lot of people use record-variables in a completely wrong way.

The smaller errors just cost performance but work (like using FINDFIRST instead of FINDSET) But there are also errors that make the program go nuts (like using RESET instead of CLEAR OR INIT).

So I decided to create a new how-to for it.

A lot of times programmers don’t know (and don’t take the time to study) what the C/AL commands exactly do or what their ‘features’ are.

I hope that it helps future-, junior- and senior-programmers to select the best way to program something.

I already learned something by writing this How-to.

When writing down some techniques, I found out that I never tested if they really worked like I supposed they worked. So I just tested it and luckily they worked how I supposed they worked but now it is not anymore a gut feeling but a certainty.

So I can only say : go and enjoy the reading : How to work with record-variables?

But something I want to write anyway.

This is the third conference I do and the first one in which I am also an organizer. Well, to be honest, in reality it is Luc who organized all. I, being in Italy, could do very little except giving some ideas, commenting on Luc’s idea’s if I found something could be made better, creating some statistics on the forum use, testing out the premium gift in the morning of the conference (we did use it).

It is hard work. We were there at 7.00 to start preparing (opening the bags to put something extra in and closing them again and putting them at the entrance, putting the drums in place and so on, luckily we had some help.).

We started with a little drumming session by Drum Cafe and then Luc started the opening speech. Not that he really liked to do it, but being organizer and webmaster he couldn’t get from under it (he tried anyway…)

Then I also had my 5 minutes of fame. The statistics on the forum-use was for me. This has been my first time on the podium with so much people. I though it went quite well. (Waldo already gave me some comment on it. I expected worse :-))))  I invite him to put it in the comments).

Then we had a big interactive drumming session that was very funny. A very good idea of Luc. But I thought that unloading and putting in place all those drums was hard work….

Then a Coffee break (at least for the attendees). At least during the sessions we could rest a little. I also noticed that blogging during the sessions is quite hard now that I DIDN’T blog.

Next Generation Unified Communications Platform by Johan Delimon:

And we started with the first technical session about the Next Generation Unified Communications platform. My impression was that from Outlook we will be able to manage phone calls, video chats, webcasts, IM,. You will see directly who is online, who is busy, offline, away, sleeping, in meeting, …

Did I mention that also emails can be managed by Outlook?

Lunch break and VERY hungry….

Architectural deep dive for NAV2009 and beyond, NAV 2009SP1 update, Webservices update by Michael Nielsen, Kim Ibfelt, Claus Lundstrøm:

I learned something that got me my mouth open wide: If you think that the C/AL editor (pre NAV2009) is bad… Actually for NOT being an editor it is VERY good. In reality the C/AL editor was nothing more then a temptable with textfields…

SP1 of NAV2009. What I most remembered was that in codeunit 1 it will be possible to put a global filter on a table. But I am not sure if it is already in it, or it is planned to be put in or they would want to put it in. Anyway, if I had THAT in version 2.01……

Another coffee break

And now the Closing keynote : delivering software to a global audience by Chad Hower:

Well, this is not a strict technical sessions (but it did have a very high slight-count). In short : things you need to think about if you want to sell your add-on all over the globe. It is not just about translating your captions (and even with that a lot can go wrong), but also keeping in mind that not everyone reads left to right or ‘few’ that  means 2 - 4 but in other languages it can mean 2,3,102,103 (if I remember correctly. If the example is wrong, you get the idea about ‘few’ in some other language). But also about the pictures in the slights that can be a ok in 1 country and very offending in another. There were quite some surprises!

I think the best advice was that if you need to translate something, get a NATIVE speaker of that language that also know the source language and NOT the other way around.

Finally Dinner. We had Italian (Luc’s idea, not mine. I preferred another one being used to eat Italian (almost) all the time…), Mexican, wok. Very nice. After that some music and some Belgian beers (not everyone agrees with this, but they are the best in the world anyway!)

We had a very high Dynamics NAV MVP per Square meter count! (see more : http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34371)

And some more links:

http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34354

http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34379

http://www.mibusoconference.com/impressions.asp

http://picasaweb.google.com/NAVCommunity

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/admin/archive/2009/05/19/congratulations-to-mibuso-with-the-10-years.aspx

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/kine/archive/2009/05/17/future-of-nav-development-environment.aspx

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/waldo/archive/2009/05/15/mibuso-conference-2009-overview.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E_yhPl8r2M

If someone finds more links, please put them in the comments.

The only problem I found was to get some electricity in the auditorio (I didn’t) so at a certain point my battery died and I had to take notes by hand and later try to decipher them. In the other places I found electricity.

In 6 people they organized Directions EMEA 2009. Considering that it is not there primary job, we must congratulate and thank them (and their companies) for organizing this beautiful and interesting event.

One thing I would say for the future: help them in organizing it and book in the hotel(s) they reserved and don’t wait until the last moment. Do it as fast as possible (it also costs you less). I don’t write this because they asked me to, but because I heard them talking about some problems they encountered because people waited until the last moment for booking and also because they booked in other hotels.

I thought they would have had yellow shirts like last year, but now they were pink. I have given them an advice : next year green shirts. Everyone is going green, so….

They were aiming to get 400 people or more but with the crisis they stranded at 308 (2 more then last year). But I think it is a success anyway by not losing people.

Like last year, there were a lot of Flemish and Dutch. I thought it was because Paris was quite near so they could go by car. But also this year they were many. When I asked some people about the reason, they told that it is their mentality to go to conferences. Italians (and also others) for example don’t have that mentality and that is a shame. They are losing a lot of possible networking and information (or maybe they read my blog).

On the contrary I just said, this year I noticed more Italians then last year. One even had a stand!

Very strange. Most attendees never have contact with the organizers. I did have a lot of contact with some of them. Maybe because I am a blogger (or in this case the only one).

Sometimes I almost felt like a journalist. Maybe I should get a press-card.

The only problem is that we always have to be careful about what we are blogging. Not only as MVP’s, but also as partners. So future bloggers of Directions (and also other conventions): be careful about what you blog and if you have doubts, ask the presenter (or also your MVP lead) if you can blog about it.

BTW : I did learn MS One Note now after seeing it using on Directions EMEA 2008 (http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/04/21/some-general-remarks/) and I don’t know what I would do without it.

And that was it for Directions EMEA 2009. I do wonder which colour they will use for their shirts!

And see you all next month with the Mibuso conference and next year with Directions EMEA 2010.

Most tables were full and I didn’t know the people where there was place, so I ended up on 1 of the pink panther tables.

Finally some pictures now. I haven’t taken any pictures yet, but now I have some. The quality is not that good, because I am using my cellular phone.

First the main table of the pink panthers (the most pink panthers where at that table).

While we were eating, we had some entertainement:

There were quite a lot of people and most haven’t really worked with the transformation tool (neither did I ). If the session took 3 session-hours, it would have been better because in 2 we didn’t conclude everything.

It was quite good organized. 1 person explains and some others going around in case of problems (and there were some problems with the VPC). I also had some weird problem when running the transformation tool. Luckily deleting the subdirectory and re-copying fixed it.

There were 3 exercises for transforming a form. The first exercise we could all do together. When we started second one, Brett (at least I think it was him) said that he would do it alone and that we should just follow his actions because there wasn’t enough time. At the end of the 2 session-hours, we didn’t even completely finish the second exercise.

I really liked this one. Each year there should be 1 (or more) sessions on the things that are actual (like form transformation now).

Or maybe an even better way would be to organize an extra day (or even 2) with just these kind of sessions. Last year, SQL Perform Ltd. organized a pre-event workshop for tuning SQL and I think that was a good idea. Someone who is interested can combine both.

Well, some have already left for home. Some are visiting Barcelona (La rambla, Sagrada Famiglia,…) and some have a headache (confirmed by the speaker!). There is a lot to see in Barcelona but you need good weather (I don’t know why, but the 2 times I came here I have had rain). At least today is quite sunny.

The Directions EMEA survey of some months ago about 2009

• A lot of people filled in the survey they send out some months ago. The answers come from a lot of countries.
• Most people are NAV resellers (but also CRM and AX were quite present).
• We are all somewhat concerned about the crisis.
• Everyone expects a turnaround around mid 2010. 2 other studies (customers and partners in Convergence US) expect the same thing. The NAV guys expect it to be somewhat earlier. An advice is to not kill of your projects because when all gets better, you will have a big disadvantage.
• Most don’t expect to lose people in 2009.
• License revenue (MS products and partner products), 2009 company growth are expected to be stable or  even grow a little. Service revenue and new business opportunities are expected to grow 5%-10%!
• NAV,AX,CRM demand are expected to grow a little.
• SL and GP are expected to go down.
• Expected demand for Dynamics: Distribution, professional service, manufacturing.
• Most partners expect to sign additional vertical solution partners or create new ones themselves.
• Who do we fear most? SAP and other dynamics partners.
• Convinced by SaaS? Most people still aren’t. After the SaaSplaza, I am convinced. It has a lot of advantages for customers (and also for partners): customer costs are spread and fixed. For customers without real IT people, their systems are more under control: they only know they have a problem when they can’t login into NAV….
• For partners: For which products SaaS is attractive: ERP.
• For customers: For which products SaaS is attractive: BI analytics.
• What can Microsoft do better? There is a BIIIIIIIGGGGGGG list. And that list made its way into Microsoft and they are looking at it (and hopefully learning something from it).

My conclusion is that even if we are in a crisis, most people are positive about the (NAV-)future.

In a world full of (economic) doom-talking, it is quite nice to here some positive thinking.

In busses they went to the stadium. There they had a tour in the stadium.

There should have been a match, but it has been cancelled.

After the tour the went to eat in the VIP-lounge (if I understood [and remember] correctly).

And then back to the hotel.

One of the speakers is Michael Nielsen, a former Navision a/s employee Number 5, and the creator of the original C/AL compiler.

Gerdien started with asking MS to get an object range for the add on, then Erik took over and we got really technical. And once his add on was ready, Gerdien took over again to finish the administration part with MS.

Well, if I am developing in a wrong way, at least I know I am not alone! I already follow all coding guidelines (except than the commenting with //, but I will consider it) Eric gave.

I have to admit that Eric has done better presentations (well, I only saw one other presentation of him: http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/04/17/hardware-recomendations-to-make-installations-hum-by-eric-wouters/  and also his mike was not functioning well). I think that the not-developers could get bored by it, but being a developer, I was really interested.

• Needs special attention
  • Code on section triggers: not supported but there is a workaround with expressions
  • Layout specific currReport functions like newpage(), showoutput()
  • Createtotals()
  • Dynamic section printing based on a request form parameter. It is possible to show/hide fields and not just sections. NICE!
  • No transheader/-footer functionality in reporting services
  • Changing the papersource via code, printer drivers should be configured.

• Checklist
  • CanGrow Property: for decimals, codes, dates. It grows vertically showing the complete content! WOW, wish we had this in NAV reports!
  • Margin/page size issue
  • Format fields
    • Decimals
    • Dates
  • Use of option fields. Must use FORMAT in the sourceExpression in NAV.
  • Use of booleans.
  • New page per group. In VS there are a lot of possibilities for page breaking
  • Conditional coding in RDL. Fields, and almost all properties can have an expression.
  • Printing on more than one page with pagenumbers. Must use VS pagenumber and not the NAV one.
  • BlankZero: not supported directly. There is a function (BlankZero) for it that can be used in an expression.

Now a report has been converted into VS. But it can do a lot more.

Now a demo of a report with some extra’s.

• Interactive and collapsible lines. A lot of work to do that… Just a visibility property that changes. WOW!
• Images that swap based on a value (there are also with embedded images!)
• Dynamic filtering: property interactive sort and some parameters and done.

This session started a little boring, but after some time it got really interesting. But we should start learning VS!

Workflows can be added to each record in each table.

Working with SharePoint is possible but NOT out-of-the-box.

Export to Microsoft Project.

Permission granule : allow users to setup permissions by forms, fields, buttons, functions

I expected another round of sales talk (well, actually, a little bit of it), but it was more a demo of their product. A product that can be very useful. A lot of times people create new customers/items but forget to fill in some information (like dimensions) and when they want to post something on it, it is blocked because the data is not complete. Very annoying if you have (for example) some automated sales documents (like order creation or sales shipments).

Well, this session was part of another and should have been done after the other. If you read the other session, you will know why this wasn’t the case :

http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/04/03/net-vs-cal-use-of-net-and-webservices-by-thomas-hejlsberg/

The later a defect is discovered the more money it costs and that goes exponential.

In short MS is creating new thingies for testing the code. But I don’t know for which version.

I also talked a moment with Rusty to ask if I could blog about it and he said yes.

He is also looking for partners that are interested in it. So if you are, don’t hesitate to contact Rusty Miller : rustym at microsoft dot com.

Visual Studio : new project.

Add a service- or webservice reference. (VS 2005 is webservice, VS2008 can do both)

The URL needed for the service can be found in the documentation.

Of course we are in a demo, so something is not working….

After a restart of some services, all is ….  not working.

This is a split session, so we go to the other session (Testing Dynamics NAV by Rusty Miller) while he is fixing it. See : http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/04/03/testing-dynamics-nav-by-rusty-miller/

And back now. The problem was that the wireless network was not found. Disabling it fixed it.

In the code he creates a new systemservice, adds an URL and uses default credentials.

A command that gives all companies back from the service and a command that prints it.

In NAV he writes a new function in a codeunit to add to numbers and returns the sum as return-value.

In table 2000000076:”Web service”  he adds an entry for the codeunit and gives it a service name and publishes it (the toggle).

In VS : he updates the webservices.

He adds some code to work in a certain company. Now he can use the codeunit (see the name in the table Web Service) and the name of the function.

It is also possible to expose pages. When he saves something in the pages, all the business logic is run.

Another VS example: he reads all customer and prints the No.  and the name.

To change a customer:

Reads customer 10000 and changing his name.

Calls the Customer.Update-function and we see that in NAV the customer changed name.

Now the contrary. Some code in VS that is called by C/AL.

He makes a class library so it becomes a dll.

Properties must be set to let it become a com-object and it must be registered for COM interop.

The function is multiplying 2 integers.

In NAV, he creates a new codeunit, takes the automation variable. It will be shown in the list of automation because of the setup in VS.

Well, this is mostly sales talk. Explaining all their products.

All their products are build in NAV. So no problem interfacing. This is one thing I wanted to note because in the past I strongly supported that idea. Only recently I am accepting the idea to use things that are not in NAV. If everything is in NAV, you don’t need to install something else.

One interesting point though:

Well, to be honest, until now, this was the most boring presentation I followed. Mostly salestalk (and I think it is clear by now that I am a tech) and I had the idea that Mary was quite tired. She also talked a little yesterday and she was more energetic then.

Some talking about the crisis. Seems a lot of people are complaining, but maybe it is not so bad at all.

• What is bad?
  • Customers don’t have cash
  • They will put all risk on you
  • They will try to get each cent out of you

• What are the goodies
  • Shake out: a lot of partners (or competitors!) are not going to make it. You might do some acquisitions, but you’d better survive!
  • Partner capacity: no one is asking for it anymore. We are trying to get more efficient then before => a lot more capacity. More consultants are on the market because of the shake out.
  • Salaries go down: hiring people is cheaper.
  • Reset of rules: Maybe not so good. You can change your rules. It does not mean to squish your people.
  • Greenfield for everyone: it is a big advantage. You are pushed hard to be an entrepreneur.
  • RoI: 2 years ago no one asked for it. There was no need for it. Now it is really a part of decisionmaking. You need to prove that you know everything: you need to explain the costs to its dirty details.
  • TCO:  never asked about it. Now it is important knowing it.
  • De-central implementation: the risks for it are too great now.
  • Investment cuts: Not so nice, but it is an advantage because we can (need) cut some costs too.

Now an intermezzo: His phone started ringing. And he had some hard time to have it shut up. I had a deja-vu (http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/04/21/theme-dinner/ : see the movie and cellular-part). I thought for a moment he would be sucked into his presentation or that someone would come out of his presentation. But no. He just forgot to silence his phone.

• Way of thinking:
  • Some people are waiting when this is over. Wim thinks it will never be over because we will be in a new era. So we will need to change are way of thinking.

• New opportunities:
  • Public sector: this will fuel the economy. They are pushed to spend money.
  • Infra Construction: every country has (well some more than others, actually) its program to push the economy.
  • CRM & xRM : everyone tries to retain customers. Maintaining customer relations. They are afraid the customers won’t make it.
  • HRM: You need to keep your people. If you lose the people that make the money, you are finished or very close.
  • Process-led (Carbon, Metering, PLM, PSA): smart metering for calculating: not an issue yet, but it will become one.
  • Jewels approach: where are the ‘jewels’ in your company. How can I resell them. Who would be interested in it?
  • Business Intelligence: Companies need the next details they don’t know yet.
  • Software as a Service: pay on a monthly base is easier then paying all in 1 go.
  • Unleash your potential: they have this program but seems almost no one knows about it (about 10 people did out of the 308): ask your PAM why you don’t know it!
  • Ecosystem - selling: a reference has only value when people know that company.

• MS Direction - listen to your harts
  • VERTICAL!!!! MS asked for it for years. Finally we are doing it. Selling will be based on industry knowledge. MS gives the platform, we (should) have the industry knowledge.
  • ISV solutions: there are a lot of them
  • CfMD solutions : Certified for Microsoft Dynamics program.
  • Industry Knowledge: People will test you on it.
  • Grasp Opportunities: if you are in a big competition, get back to MS to get some help.
  • Beat Competition (Microsoft doesn’t like to lose [and I suppose neither are you…])

• Way of selling
  • Get ERP back on priority list of customers.
  • The worst thing you can do is to NOT decide anything. Later you will have to redo it and you are losing time and money.
  • Convince CEO that his software is more important than his machine.
  • Cost of sales versus Dealsize? If dealsize is shrinking, can we still do a full sales-cycle?
  • Role of Project Manager or Business Architect: CEO is for the salesrep. The others people are for the normal people to lead the sales.
  • Best performing companies: also service employees have variable compensations. This way they are more motivated to give the best of them.

• Lessons from bottom performers: Spend heavily on R&D.
• The next gen partner plan
  • Microsoft want to support us better. Microsoft will give more info on all of it later.

• Three take aways
  • Go for the opportunity - your opportunity: go for change, find the opportunity
  • Look at your sales approach
  • Let’s make sure we stay aligned: don’t invest in something that already exists.
  • CONNECT WITH YOUR PAM!

Last year the organizers had yellow shirts, now they are the ‘pink panters’.

Jan Sillemann and Dan Brown talk about NAV2009 and beyond.

72000+ customers

4000+ certified partners

2000+ addons

40+ localized versions

1250000+ licensed users

Seems that NAV2009 is  a big success and that it is selling well. I don’t know if it is some salestalk but in Italy it doesn’t seem to be a big success. But experience with the Italian market has learned me that Italy is quite conservative about implementing new technologies.

Dan also showed a dashboard report done by MVP Rene Gayer and how it is integrated in the RTC.

Software+services strategy: they are looking into it to give us extra tools for it.

There are some new awards for partners more based on industry. So check out these and nominate yourself if you want some award.

Introducing Crispin Read, General Manager MS Dynamics ERP

The ERP-market is very fragmented with a lot of junk from vendors who don’t invest in their product. MS is spending lots of money in R&D. They want to ‘defragment’ the market. (I am more technical person and with defragmenting I think about disks or databases but  never thought about markets….).

Customersource NAV has improved. Now it is translated into 22 languages. This is useful for non-English customers. Users can use it for trainings so they do less calls to our helpdesks. Probably (and hopefully!) they will call more to say: hey, I found this new feature on customersource and I want you to implement it for me. ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/04/03/keynotes-1dynamics-nav-2009-and-beyond/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/04/03/bad-news-about-convergence-emea-2009/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/04/03/bad-news-about-convergence-emea-2009/#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:12:09 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2009/04/03/bad-news-about-convergence-emea-2009/ We had an MVP lunch and Kipper York told us that she read yesterday that the Convergence EMEA 2009 has been cancelled. I searched on internet and found some sites with more info.

More info:

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/convergence/vienna09/default.aspx

http://msdynamicsworld.com/story/dynamics-ax/microsoft-cancels-next-dynamics-european-convergence-event-save-customers-money

• What to do with custom objects
  • Tables
    • Create fieldgroups trigger
    • Add extended datatypes
  • Forms
    • Clean-up layout if possible (a form should look like one of the defaults) (N columns will become 2 columns on pages)
    • Statistics style forms needs work
    • Transform to pages
  • Reports
    • Consider leaving as classic layout only
    • Redo layout in SQL reporting services
  • All objects
    • Search for obsolete functions and recode (function ISSERVICETIER can be used) (don’t use SHELL)
    • Recode functions to show card directly (from code). Will not work.
    • Small forms to ask for some input must be recoded

• Transformation tool
  • Standard layout forms transfer good
  • Data controls the transformation (TIF tool)
  • Building data for custom objects, controls or actions required
  • Manual process with several steps (try an error)

• Transformation tool data (application written in NAV ; gets forms and analyses the type of form and you can change it; creates XML file, then convert it with transformation tool, import it and compile it)
  • Build inside the mergetool
  • Find all actions from forms (command buttons, menu items, captions, menu level)
  • Find controls show on card forms per page (fields, functions, variables)
  • Lookup icons for actions
  • Easy to maintain between versions or databases

• Merging of page objects
  • Require fixed ID transformation ID
    • Release in March 2009 on partnersource
    • Translation import/export required
  • Merges very similar to tables
    • Easy merge
    • Mostly automatic
  • No pagenames problem like card forms
  • No control position problems

• More info
  • Walkthroughs from MS
  • www.mergetool.com

• #users /#transactions
• Multiple countries in 1 DB
• #users>200 : attention

Large opportunities

• Amount $
• # transactions
• # users

Competitors say: NAV is not scalable and for small customers

How to address challenges

• 1 or more instances (scale out)
• Check #users/transactions
• Check user profiles (light/medium/heavy users and which modules do they use)
• Check (add-on) version : FIND(’+-’),…
• Check partner maturity (ISV) (focus on something (like only developing for SQL) is better)
• Load-test

How to adress scalability questions

• Standard way:
  • Reference cases / sizing guide

• Alternative because above is no prove : load testing
  • Take hardware guideline and create profiles of users and test.
    • Partner creates storyboard (roles and activities)
    • Partner creates scripts (using application benchmark toolkit (on partnersource)
    • Partner prepares (large) DB
    • Eliminate FIND(’+-’) on heavy processes
  • Involve SQL experts or MCS (1 or 2 days onsite review of procedure/scripts ; 4-5 days load test support ; 1-3 days for end report)
  • Involve MTC [=Microsoft Technology Centre] (1 day setup ; 4-5 days load test)
  • Hardware:
    • Laptop for measurement
    • N terminal servers (simulates some users) (1 CPU per 20-25 users; 50 MB per user) [IMHO:I think it is better 100MB per user for NAV]
    • DB server (1 CPU per 100 users ; 8-32 GB internal memory)
    • SAN (remember : not just 20 users, but several 100 users)

• What did we learn
  • These tests will help in large sales cases
  • Difficult to setup (especially the first time)
  • Prepare, Prepare, Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
  • Costly but,
    • Payback in sales
    • Confidence

• Costs
  • Partner preparations
  • MCS costs (6-10 days) (9-15K EUR) excl T&E
  • MTC costs: in both cases sponsored by MS

• How to leverage the MTC’s
  • Word wide availability (http://www.microsoft.com/mtc/default.mspx)
  • Go and ask your PAM,PTS,SSP
  • Engagement criteria : strategic deal ($ or competition), Some require MCS involvement (Munich)
  • Can also be run in remote desktop

• Other resources
  • TPAG
  • Large projects landing page (or partnersource)
  • Standard benchmark reports

• Key takeaways
  • Make a choice (native or SQL)
  • Prepare your add on
  • Test & improve
  • Go & close business in the tier-2 market

Core product is “Scribe Insight” that is used by all customers. It has 2 parts : the workbench (setup: point and click) and the console (automate and integrate migrations).

They have 2 adapters: connectivity adapters (ODBC, text, SQL, Oracle) and add-on adapters : like for Dynamics CRM and NAV. NAV using NAS and C/Front. (At least, this is what I understood).

They create solution templates like for CRM+NAV that is a starting point for further integration. These templates are free.

Configurable integrations without coding. Flexible to address any unique requirements. Adaptable as business processes change. Scalable for Mid-market and Enterprise organizations.

Key benefits:

Workbench has 3 main windows: source data (source fields), target data (target fields), links/data formulas/lookup criteria.

Select a source field, select the target field and link it. Then it is possible to transform data, conditioning the transfer of data,…

There is also a test window to see the source data and what it becomes in the target.

Console sets management parameters like when and how. (some file in a subdirectory, messagequeue, query results, time-based).

Alerts : DB messaging, application messaging, Scribe messaging can send an email. Also business activity like a customer that gets over his creditlimit.

Also possible to create data views on system data like load balancing or business activity.

• 1990 : report designer
• 1990 : account schedules
• 2002 : jet reports
• 2008 : NAV 2009 report designer
• 2009+ : SSRS

What did we learn:

• Fast in NAV
• Slow in Excel
• Security issues
• SSRS ineffective
• SSRS desirable
• Steeper learning curves
• Techie/power user
• No end user tool
• “Complex”
• NAV UX desirable
• Expensive
• Resistance to “new”

We need right technology (fast,secure,…), user experience (familiar, easy to learn/use), cost (simple, all-inclusive, no programming)

• Right technology:
  • Microsoft
    • RDL
    • Report viewer
  • SSRS enabling

• Right user experience
• Right cost ($5000)
  • Developer aids
  • Ad-hoc reports
  • Financial reports
  • SSRS integration

I’ll start with a small description of the hotel. It is a 5 star hotel build in 2006, so quite recent and you can see that. Wireless network everywhere, but not without problems. At a certain moment the network failed and after that my login didn’t work anymore. Now I have requested another login and I am back online.

The ‘feature’ that caught my attention most are the elevators. There aren’t buttons to call the elevator. There is a touchscreen in which you define were you want to go (reception, which restaurant, which level,…). Then the touchscreen shows you which elevator to take.

The reception itself was nice. Meeting people you only see on conventions like this. Some snacks to eat while you’re talking. Something to drink.

At a certain point someone started talking at the microphone, but I don’t know who it was and neither where that person was.

Most people continued talking, so it was impossible to understand what was said. But I understand one thing: there are more people than last year. 306 last year and now 308. Only 2 persons more now. Considering the economical crisis, this is not bad at all.

You have a full backup of your customer and restore it on your server. Once the restore is finished, you have to create a user in NAV that is known on your server. THIS BEFORE getting out of NAV. But of course you have forgotten to do it and now you can’t get into your DB.

If you have done a restore in a native DB, there is no other option than to redo the complete restore.

If, on the other hand, you have a SQL DB, than there are some methods to fix it.
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·        Early Registration discount date has been extended to January 21, 2009.  Save $300 by registering early, secure your favorite hotels while they are still available and take advantage of better airline rates.

·        The session catalog (containing 225 sessions) is now live on the Convergence marketing site.

·        The Convergence Customer Excellence Awards recognize, honor and celebrate customers who have achieved outstanding success with their Microsoft solutions as well as Microsoft partners’ solutions.  Customer Excellence Award nominations are now being accepted through January 20, 2009.

I know it is a little late, but I got the email in which they asked me to announce this a little late and it also took a little time before I could read it (between Australian flu and a complicated startup of a customer).

But why do they have a point.

1) I think it is important to keep investing even if the economy isn’t doing well. These events are important to let your company be known. And the more your company is known in the world, the easier it is to do business.

2) Also technically it is a good idea. For the moment I have been able to go to one event (Directions EMEA 2008) and I did learn a lot. And NOT only about the topics of the presentations. You can learn tricks others use to make their lives easier.

3) You get to learn a lot of new people, other points of view (maybe also views better then yours…).

And probably you know other good reasons to go…

What do they have?

• They have 2 physical servers (64bit) with each 16GB of memory, 2 quadcore processors. They are completely virtualized with VMWare.
• A SAN with 15 disks:
  • 5 disks in RAID5: these are used to store all the virtual servers (later more on these). And thus the disks are used quite heavily.
  • 5 disks in RAID5: these are used less.
  • 4 disks in RAID10: these are for the databases (I will talk about this later. Prepare for impact!).
  • 1 disk as spare.

We have SOME databases:

• A NAV DB. This database will be heavily used most of the day.
• A DB used by the warehouse. They want to use an external warehouse application and not the one from NAV. This database will be used most of the day.
• A DB used by an external application for a mobile solution (not the one of NAV). In this DB we will have heavy writing to prepare (while heavy reading in the NAV DB/an intermediate DB) just before the start of the day. In the morning, most of it will be reading (the mobile users download the new data).
• A DB used for a webserver. This database will be used most of the day. This will be implemented later in the project.
• Intermediate DB. (Actually multiple DB’s). Both the external warehouse application and the mobile solution need an external DB in which there are tables (or views) from which they get data or write data. To avoid dirtying the NAV DB with tables/views that have to be handled directly in SQL, I created these DB’s: one DB for each combination (NAV+external warehouse, NAV+mobile, NAV+web). This way everything is beautifully separated. For the moment I consider these as 1 DB. If needed I can also separate these.

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Well, here is some detailed info : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing or http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

But in short : it all started with SETI@home (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home). To detect signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life in radiosignals. This asked for a lot of processing power that only supercomputers have (at a very high cost). So they invented this system to use the processing power of PC’s all over the world. Most PC’s use very little CPU, so the idle time can be used for processing BOINC-projects.

At the moment there are a lot of other projects (search for cures for cancer, medicine, climatology, astrophysics, mathematics, …). It can be you (=your PC) that discovers ET or a cure for all cancers or some other groundbreaking medicine (even if I doubt you will ever know it was your PC)!

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But this does not mean I don’t follow up on blogs, topics and so on. Lately I found some rather interesting things (but I don’t remember on which blog) for the transactionlog-performance.

First I will talk a little about transaction log fragmentation.

No, NOT about the physical fragmentation. I think that issue is well-known by now (at least, I hope so).

I want to talk about internal fragmentation!

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Why do I put double quotes around negative? Well, for testing it is a quite interesting feature. Why?

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First thing I noticed is that even the lowest priced computers are quite powerful! Maybe it looks to me like that because I am used to see server hardware and portables. It costs €233, has 2 GB of memory, dual core Intel 64bit (!) CPU (don’t remember the speed, but for performance this is generally not so imported). For the rest, it has a 160GB SATA drive and a SATA DVD. No floppy! An integrated ethernet card. I lost count of the USB-ports and various other ports on it. But no parallel port for the printer (I still use one that ONLY has a parallel port! Well, ok, I can accept that. After all, we decided to get rid of it anyway when the cartridge will be empty [a new cartridge probably costs more then the printer anyway]). An (Italian) Vista was pre-installed on the desktop.

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Read here for more info:Website maintenance (upgrade of forum)

Here are all the messages that have been send to you. If it happens your PM-box is full, you need to delete some PM’s to make place. This can also be done automatically by a setting (Private messages=>Rules, folders & settings=>Folder options [see later for more info]).

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What (and when or why) is reporting a post/topic?

• WHAT: Reporting means to bring a topic or post to the attention of the moderators/administrators.
• WHEN (WHY):
  • When you think that a post/topic is spam or advertising or if it contains offensive text or pictures,… In the forum rules is explained how a topic/post should behave. If it breaks one (or more) rules, you can report it (there is no need to be a back seat moderator). The moderators/administrators will then decide what to do with it.
  • When a topic contains a bad title (like Help me ; I am stuck ; I’ve got an error ; …)
  • When a topic is in the wrong forum
  • When 2 user created the same topic multiple times in the same or another forum.
  • When a topic can be ‘promoted’ to the Navision Tips&Tricks forum.
  • When a topic is solved (or is a good posting) and the attribute is not set. (BTW: DON’T report the ones that have [SOLVED] in the description. These we will find and in time, we will change them (actually we hope the topic-owner does this ).
  • Other reasons you might consider valid. (more…)
    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/reporting-a-posttopic/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:56:50 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/ Someone has responded to your topic and you want to give more information or ask some extra information on the topic.

    So, go to the topic and then click the “postreply” button (not the newtopic! This will create a completely new topic).

    

    For the rest, this is less- or more the same as for creating a new topic. Also here it is possible to attach pictures.

    After the reply-part, there is the attachment part and after that there is the complete history of the topic.

    

    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/create-a-new-post/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:46:43 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/ This has completely changed! The RSS-MOD we found has a lot of possibilities.

    Actually, it has so many options I had some problems too. After studying them, I advised Luc to remove some of them and to make some options standard.

    First thing: It makes a difference if you are logged in or not when opening this page! If you are logged in, you can also see the protected forums (like the 2 protected Romanian forums). Of course ONLY if your user account has access to it!

    Where to find the RSS-page? Well you can access it from anywhere (RSS Feed):

    

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    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/28/rss-feeds/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:46:20 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/ After you searched the forum and didn’t find your problem (and solution), you decided to write a post. But first you needed to create a login and do some setup.

    After all that, finally you can make a new topic.

    First problem: in which forum? Well read the forum-descriptions and it will be clear where to write it.

    Second (and probably biggest problem): a good title!

    Remember a good title describes your problem and gives other uses directly an idea what the topic is about.

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    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/27/create-a-new-topic/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:57:54 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/ This one is new and quite interesting. What are friends for? Well, in general you want to keep them close! How? I think it is easier to explain it with an example.
    • Manage friends

      If for example you send a lot of PM’s to a certain person, in the new version you always needed to type in his/her name or search it in the list. If you define the person as a friend, you don’t need to do it anymore. You can just click on the add-button near the name and it will be added as the person to send a PM to (later more on PM’s). You also see if they are online or not. If the person wants his online status to be hidden, you won’t see him as online.

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    ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-friends-foes/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:49:42 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/
  • Edit memberships

  Until now, Luc did change some things in the forum software to simulate groups (Administrators, Moderators, MVP, Site Supporters).

  Now this is integrated in the forum-software.

  

  All users, once they confirmed the registration, are placed into “Registered users”. In some you can apply to join and if you meet the conditions, you are admitted. This is all done by the administrator.

  • Manage groups

  You have this menu if you are leader of a group. For the moment only the administrator can do this.

  

  ]]> http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-user-groups/feed/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-board-preferences/ http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-board-preferences/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:41:54 +0000 kriki http://mibuso.com/blogs/kriki/2008/08/19/ucp-board-preferences/
• Edit global settings

Also this is quite familiar.

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This is quite familiar, I would say.

Ok. I admit it, the birthday part is new…

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If there are forums or topics that interest you, you can subscribe to it. If a post is created in that forum/topic, you will be notified.

To subscribe a forum : Open the forum and in the top, you wil see “Subscribe forum”

To subscribe a topic : Open the topic and in the top, you wil see “Subscribe topic”

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From now on, I will call the User Control Panel the “UCP”!

And here is the UCP front page:

It gives some basic information like when you joined, how many posts you have. In which forum you are most active, and your most active topic.

There is so much in the UCP that I decided to divide it into parts. I will make a separate blogpost for:

• UCP Overview
• UCP Profile
• UCP Board Preferences
• UCP User Groups
• UCP Friends & Foes

Also the private messages are a part of the UCP now. I will come to these in the end. First I will handle the other UCP-topics, then about posting, RSS, PM’s, reporting.

But were are they? In the old version they are “hidden” in the “Announcements”-forum as an announcement. Now we have a better place! There is a link on the main forum page!

We did some restructuring of the rules. They are now grouped by topic:

When we make changes to the rules, we will still put them in the announcements, so check them regularly (RSS is useful for this [later more on RSS]). And then change/add them in the forum rules page.

In the old version, I always missed this possibility.

Including the message texts in the search can give you a lot of extra topics that are NOT about your problem, but they are selected because your keywords happen to be in it.

The title does NOT have that problem (or at least SHOULDN’T have it). BUT this means EVERYONE has to create good titles that REALLY explain what the topic is about. This the BIG reason, I do insist on having a title that says something and not “Help”, “URGENT”,…

In reality, I only have 2 advices:

1. First and for all: use good titles when you write a topic.
2. Try to put your search-parameters to limit as much as possible the replies. If you don’t find what you need, you can always try to remove some parameters and have a wider search.

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First what is there to blog about? I made a tour of Mibuso 3 to see what is new and make some note for a blog. I noticed that in almost (or all) places something was changed or added.

Now I have a beautiful list of things to blog about. But now I have another problem: in which order to blog about them?

After some days I found the answer. I will blog about them in the order that a new user should use all the functionalities of the Mibuso 3.

But why does someone come to the forum?

Because you have a problem and are searching for an answer to your problem.

So first part is to search something. If you don’t find it, you need to write a topic but first you need to register as a user (and while waiting for the confirmation-email, it is a good idea to read the forum rules).

Then you setup your user account (at least I do that).

And then you write your topic, wait for answers (through email or RSS), respond to the replies (through a post or also a private message [=PM]) and then (hopefully) confirm your problem has been solved.

We are planning the upgrade in first half of September 2008!

This is the first post about the new version. Other posts will follow in which I will explain the new features and some differences.

First of all : we have tried to keep the forum-look as close as what we are used to (As a first ‘taste’, Luc showed me the new forum with a complete new look. HORROR! PANIC! I don’t recognize MY forum any more! We decided immediately to keep the look we all know too well.)

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But the practical maximum we ever reached (or heard/read from others) is around 850MB.

The same for me. I never installed or heard someone install a native database service and got over that 850MB limit (and sometimes even getting there is difficult).

I also got once a problem when installing the service with less memory and it wouldn’t install. I got angry, restarted the install-batch (I always use a batch with the install parameters to install the service) several times and after about 10 times I got the message that the service was installed. Why didn’t the install work from the first time? I didn’t find out at the moment and I still don’t know the answer. But at least the installation was done and all works.

NOW I can confirm someone who arrived at a 950MB cache!

And even more, it is not from someone who told me he arrived there! I DID IT MYSELF!

I have a customer who put some more memory in their server (from 1GB to 2GB) because they had a cache of about 550 MB and they are suffering some performance issues lately when doing their end-of-month processing.

I just tried 850MB and it installed immediately. So I thought:why not try more : I tied 950MB and it installed from the first time!

Why don’t we have 1GB? To be honest, I didn’t even dare to try it out (after I got so easily 950MB). I’ve had to much problems in the past to even get at 850MB.

And to win another 50MB is not so much. We just got from about 550MB to 950MB: a gain of about 90%!

Why this post?

Well, finally I have someone who installed a native database server with over 850MB of cache! And I don’t have it from hear-say, but from a trustworthy source (Well … I consider myself a trustworthy source…).

This latest phrase convinced me to refer to that blog. It is quite hard to create good indexes. But if you don’t know the data or how that data is used, how can you possible think to index it in a good way?

This is the blog:
How hard is it to pick the right non-clustered indexes?

I found this blog : How to Integrate Performance Monitor and SQL Profiler

So why talk about them?

Well, this bug is REALLY different. This bug is a very ancient one. One that came from the era of the first computers!

What it is the story?

Well, I was at a customer when suddenly someone told me to have a look on his screen because of a bug.

So far, nothing special.

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The “NAV” in Dynamics NAV is pronounced letter by letter using the English alfabet and not as 1 word.
I write this because I noticed a lot that people don’t know exactly how it should be pronounced.

I also noticed that most demo’s are done from a VPC. This really has some advantages:
-You don’t need to install anything on your PC.
-Also if someone prepares it and sends it to someone else, you don’t need to worry if the person has installed everything. (Just worry about the fact that the portable that needs to run it needs enough memory and it needs MS Virtual Machine installed.

Also some jokes about me:
-When others were searching for me they just looked for an electric socket because they knew they would find me there writing and blogging.
-Another joke was that they said that I had my portable attached to my hands. Because each time they saw me it was with my portable under my hands.

-I definitly have to learn MS OneNote. Waldo told me (I asked for some tips&tricks for blogging during the events) he used OneNote to write his blogs and also meetings.

Maybe some words about Directions EMEA 2008 (after all THAT was the event)
I can’t compare other events because it was my first one. I find it a great event with a good mix between salesstuff and techstuff.
Neither sales, neither techies could fall asleep while listening (Some did anyway!) to an annoying session (salesstuff for techies or techstuff for salespeople).
I also heard a lot of times that people found it a great event.
Some of those also went to Directions US and they found EMEA was better.

Why do you care about training your people?
-more consultants=more revenue, more margin.
-more productive consultants=more revenue, more margin, higher profitability
-avoid burn them out

Partner launch portal
-one stop shop
–product downloads
–VPCs/CTPs
–training materials&recordings
–sales and marketing materials
–etc
–see also on the partnersource. There are some links for NAV5 and NAV2009! Keep also that page in mind, they will continue uploading new material.

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Web services
-new method of interacting programmatically with the MS Dynamics NAV system
–Access over a network
–execution on remote system
-Widely-used, industry-standard
–Understood/used by other systems/products
–Best way to integrate across systems

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Directions EMEA can become bigger then Directions US, because we have a very big community.

MS business solutions guiding principles
-build most recognizable brand in business applications market
-deliver most innovative&easily adaptable platform of ISV’s
-preserve our customer and partner investments while strengthening their overall experience
-enable and equip an industry-leading ecosystem of solution providers
-deliver a competitively superior value proposition for customers

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Luckily the hotel provided some coats to protect us:

Luc (at the right) and me (at the left).

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Doomsday:What is there for the future: .NET, C#, reporting services,…? I will be out of business because I just have C/AL programmers.
No problem! NAV2009 is there to make a bright future!
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Why does business want hosted applications?
What does this mean to the delivery model?
What does this mean to your business model? It is an opportunity!

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Why use datawarehouse when
-native db is used for NAV
-many users on NAV
-large SQL Navision DB
-need to combine or consolidate several companies in one report or cube with same structure and currency
-heavy use of NAV dimensions
-when you have additional data sources
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At least the salestalk ended fast and for a techie it was interesting anyway (can’t say the same about other techtalk)

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Until know I didn’t understand a lot, probably because I don’t know anything about .NET…

Demo-time:
office business application
using:
-Visual Studio tools for Office
-Windows Presentation Foundation
-LINQ to SQL

Creating a worddocument, it shows also the items in the bottom of the screen and you can scroll between them and it shows them big when selected (the fish-eye view). It is easy to do. On the internet you can find info how to. I haven’t the slightest idea on how to start programming it.

Basically it is a first impression for Navision guys/girls that it is also possible and quite easy to program some things in Visual Studio.
The question is : do we, C/AL diehards, need to learn Visual Studio or can we just hire guys/girls to do it for us, telling them what we need, how to connect to the DB, which tables to use and so on.
I think it is better to find other people to do it. You cannot specialize in all things (even if I would like to).

But I have to admit that the Visual Studio environment is flashy. I can imagine that when the Visual Studio developers see the Navision environment, they get a bad surprise.