Plataan

How to find out which fields were added to a Dynamics NAV database ?

Sometimes you need to create a list of all of the fields that were added to a database. A very easy and quick way to do this is by using the Field table.

Example:

Create a new form using the form wizard and put Field as the table.

Select all the fields from the Field table and preview the form.

Now you can set a filter on the FieldNo: 50000..99999.

And voila, these are the fields that were added to the database. Of course you will need to expand the filter for fields added in the add-on range.

Reminders in NAV 5.0 SP1: This smells like a bug!

I know how to use reminders in NAV quite well and this from a trainer, a consultant and a user point of view.

But there was always one field that drew my attention: "Use Header Level". There isn't much of information on this field in the official courseware, so I did some testing myself to see what this field exactly does. You can describe this field as follows:

If you check this field, NAV will use the Header Level for all reminder lines. The Header Level is defined as the highest level of the different reminder lines of that reminder.

For example, we have a reminder with 2 invoices on it. For one invoice, it is the first time that it appears on a reminder (Level 1), for the second invoice, it is the second time that it is reminded (Level 2). If you check in this case the field (Use Header Level), NAV will use Level 2 for both invoices. Otherwise it would use Level 1 for the first invoice and Level 2 for the second.

What does this means: basically this means that NAV will use this field to see whether interest should be calculated for the reminder lines. Suppose that in the above example, the field "Calculate Interest" is checked in the setup of Level 2, then NAV will also calculate interest for the invoice that only appears for the first time on the reminder.

I already made the above example on a NAV 4.0 SP3 version and it always worked flawlessly. Last week however, I also tried to make this example on a NAV 5.0 SP1 (BE version) and there it didn't work. First I thought I made a mistake somewhere, so I tried over and over again for several times, but it kept giving me the wrong results. Then I started to play around a little bit with the settings and I discovered what went wrong:

When you go to the batch job "Create Reminders" and on the Options tab page, you check the field "Use Header Level", NAV will not apply the settings of the highest level of the different reminder lines, but it will apply the settings of one level higher.

By making an example it will become clear:

Reminder Term: DOMESTIC
Levels: 3

First invoice which has already been reminded 1 time:

Second invoice that will be reminded for the first time in the second reminder of the first invoice. We will use the "Use Header Level" field:

In this example, the result should be that NAV will not calculate interest (in the setup, Level 2 has no "Calculate Intrest").
But if you create the reminder as shown above, the result is:

As you can see, NAV calculates interest for both invoices and because Level 3 is the only level where interest calculation is activated, we can conclude that level 3 is used instead of Level 2.

If you make the exact same example in 4.0, you will see that Level 2 is used (as it should be). I haven't tried it yet on a W1 version, but it doesn't seem to be something which has got to do with localization. I know that the field "Use Header Level" isn't used that much, but you never know…

Microsoft Releases SQL Server 2008

Microsoft Corp. announced the release to manufacturing of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, the new version of the company's acclaimed data management and business intelligence platform.

SQL Server 2008 (code-named "Katmai") aims to make data management self-tuning, self organizing, and self maintaining with the development of SQL Server Always On technologies, to provide near-zero downtime.

SQL Server 2008 will also include support for structured and semi-structured data, including digital media formats for pictures, audio, video and other multimedia data. In current versions, such multimedia data can be stored as BLOBs (binary large objects), but they are generic bitstreams. Intrinsic awareness of multimedia data will allow specialized functions to be performed on them. According to Paul Flessner, senior Vice President, Server Applications, Microsoft Corp., SQL Server 2008 can be a data storage backend for different varieties of data: XML, email, time/calendar, file, document, spatial, etc as well as perform search, query, analysis, sharing, and synchronization across all data types.

Other new data types include specialized date and time types and a spatial data type for location-dependent data. Better support for unstructured and semi-structured data is provided using the FILESTREAM data type has been added, which can be used to reference any file stored on the file system. Structured data and metadata about the file is stored in SQL Server database, whereas the unstructured component is stored in the file system. Such files can be accessed both via Win32 file handling APIs as well as via SQL Server using T-SQL; doing the latter accesses the file data as a binary BLOB. Backing up and restoring the database backs up or restores the referenced files as well. SQL Server 2008 also natively supports hierarchical data, and included T-SQL constructs to directly deal with them, without using recursive queries.

Spatial data will be stored in two types. A "Flat Earth" (GEOMETRY or planar) data type represents geospatial data which has been projected from its native, spherical, coordinate system into a plane A "Round Earth" data type (GEOGRAPHY) uses an ellipsoidal model in which the Earth is defined as a single continuous entity which does not suffer from the singularities such as the international dateline, poles, or map projection zone "edges". Approximately 70 methods will be available when SQL Server "Katmai" ships to represent spatial operations for the Open Geospatial Consortium Simple Features for SQL, Version 1.1.

SQL Server includes better compression features, which also helps in improving scalability. It also includes Resource Governor that allows reserving resources for certain users or workflows. It will also include capabilities for transparent encryption of data as well as compression of backups. SQL Server Katmai will support the ADO.NET Entity Framework and the reporting tools, replication, and data definition will be build around the Entity Data Model. SQL Server Reporting Services will gain charting capabilities from the integration of the data visualization products from Dundas Data Visualization Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft.

On the management side, SQL Server 2008 will include the Declarative Management Framework which allows configuring policies and constraints, on the entire database or certain tables, declaratively. The version of SQL Server Management Studio included with SQL Server 2008 supports IntelliSense for SQL queries. However, with the current CTP, it is limited to SELECT queries; it will be expanded to other T-SQL constructs over later releases. SQL Server 2008 will also make the databases available via Windows PowerShell providers and management functionality available as Cmdlets, so that the server and all the running instances can be managed from Windows PowerShell.

SQL Server 2008 is now available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and will be available for evaluation download on Aug. 7, 2008. SQL Server 2008 Express and SQL Server Compact editions are available for free download today at http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver.

As previously announced, pricing for SQL Server will not increase with SQL Server 2008.

More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/sqlserver.