Microsoft Dynamics NAV Integration with BizTalk RFID white paper + sample

Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV can integrate with BizTalk RFID solution in many different ways depending on the particular customer scenario. In a front office scenario, where a store clerk needs to scan items with RFID tags or update tags manually, a synchronous control model may be sufficient. However for a warehouse back office scenario where tags need to be read off or printed to items on a conveyer belt, an asynchronous model may be more appropriate. In addition, BizTalk RFID solution provides a built-in asynchronous handler with Microsoft® SQL® Server as an RFID event store. This provides a consuming application such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV to asynchronously retrieve or process RFID event information directly from SQL Server.

We have included both synchronous and asynchronous samples with Microsoft Dynamics NAV as a consumer application of Microsoft BizTalk RFID services. Microsoft BizTalk RFID solution only supports Managed Event handlers and exposes Web Service APIs. However Microsoft Dynamics NAV can only expose the COM event handler and consume the COM APIs. Therefore, to provide managed Web services to unmanaged COM interoperability, the sample provided here includes a sample COM+ wrapper that wraps Web Service methods by their COM equivalents and the COM+ event handler by a Managed Event handler. We have also provided the source code for this sample wrapper so that partners can further customize and extend this wrapper to support their specific scenario requirements. This is further described in the Design Specification section of this document.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a very versatile and extensible platform and BizTalk RFID provides multiple integration approaches that include Web Service APIs, Managed Events, SQL Server database as RFID Events Store. NAV Partners and developers may choose to implement their custom integration approaches, for example, using an RFID SQL Server event handler or using a custom MSMQ event store for more persistent & reliable storage of RFID events than COM+.