How to manage MS Dynamics NAV C/AL Codes in TFS with versioning

Question

I need to keep all MS Dynamics NAV development codes in TFS, currently I export NAV objects in FOB/TXT format and add these to TFS. But I am not able to leverage the advantages of TFS, like versioning, check-in, check-out process etc., so its unmanageable between development team and QA team.

As MS Dynamics NAV keep their Codes in SQL database, I have only option to export the objects and manually add in TFS.

Experts, please advice me how could I manage these all in TFS, like we manage Visual Studio projects.

Thanks Kishore

Answer 1

There isn't any native options for source control in Dynamics NAV at this point (how amazing Git integration would be!), unless you manually export text files...

There are however some paid developments such as Object Manager that do integrate with TFS and VSS. They have a concept of projects which I believe map to branches and so on. IDYN have a trial, so it might be worth downloading it and trying it out first, as it's still a bit shaky for 2013.

Answer 2

I'm a bit of a noob to NAV development, and was unable to find a good ready-made way to get all objects that I have permission to export out into text files that could be meaningfully source-controlled, so I wrote this powershell script that attempts to export all of them and just moves on when it gets the permission error.

#### change these params to point this script at a different server or different directory ####

$serverName = "server_where_nav_db_lives"
$dbname = "name_of_your_nav_db"
$destFolder = "c:\TestNavExport"
$startTime = [System.DateTime]::Now

function doExport {
   param ([string]$type, [string]$id, [string]$name, [string]$svr, [string]$db, [string]$dest)

   $cleanName = $name.replace("/", "") 
   $filepath = "`"{0}\{1}s\{2} - {3}.txt`"" -f $dest, $type, $id, $cleanName

   write-host "filepath is $filepath"

   ### change this value to use a different version of the dev environment
   $finpath = "c:\program Files (x86)\Microsoft Dynamics NAV\71\RoleTailored Client - CU25\finsql.exe"
   $args = "command=exportobjects, file=$filepath, servername=$svr, database=$db, ntauthentication=yes, logfile=`"$dest\exportlog-$type-$cleanName.txt`", filter=`"Type=$type;ID=$id`" "


   Start-Process $finpath -ArgumentList $args -Wait
}

function CheckExists {
   param ([string]$pth) 
   if (-Not [System.IO.Directory]::Exists($pth)) { md -Path $pth }
}

$qry = @"
SELECT  
   o.ID,
   o.[Name], 
   o.[Type],
   CASE o.[Type] WHEN 0 THEN 'Table' 
      WHEN 3 THEN 'Report'
      WHEN 5 THEN 'CodeUnit'
      WHEN 6 THEN 'XMLPort'
      WHEN 7 THEN 'MenuSuite'
      WHEN 8 THEN 'Page'
      WHEN 9 THEN 'Query'
      ELSE 'Other'
   END ObjType
FROM [Object]  o  
WHERE o.[Type] IN (0, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
AND o.[ID] < 150
ORDER BY o.[ID]
"@

# make sure all the necessary directories exist
CheckExists $destFolder
CheckExists "$destFolder\Tables"
CheckExists "$destFolder\CodeUnits"
CheckExists "$destFolder\Pages"
CheckExists "$destFolder\Reports"
CheckExists "$destFolder\XMLPorts"
CheckExists "$destFolder\MenuSuites"
CheckExists "$destFolder\Querys"

# query the database for all of the objects
$connection = new-object system.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("Server=$serverName;Database=$dbname;Trusted_Connection=True")
$connection.Open();
$cmd = $connection.CreateCommand();
$cmd.CommandText = $qry;
$cmd.Connection = $connection;
$reader = [System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader]$cmd.ExecuteReader()

while ($reader.Read()) { 
   $cid = $reader["ID"];
   $cname = $reader["Name"]
   $ctype = $reader["Type"]
   $cTypeName = $reader["ObjType"]
   write-host "exporting $cname $cid $ctypename"
   doExport $cTypeName $cid $cname $serverName $dbname $destFolder
}

$connection.Close()
$endTime = [System.DateTime]::Now
("start time {0}, end time {1}, span {2}" -f $startTime, $endTime, ($endTime - $startTime)) | out-file "$destFolder\clock.txt"

I also found this other question, which shows how to get that text out of the object metadata table. This article has sample code that looks like it could translate the blobs in the metadata table into the text. Having written the script and verified that it works, I've stuck with the script so far. As a noob, I will not be too surprised if I find a much more efficient solution soon.

Answer 3

For some time we've used Visual Studio plug-in. It worked for VS2008 and NAV up to version 5. It allowed to import and export code from/to Nav by pressing buttons in VS as well as check-in/check-out.

I hope this link still works.

But I must say it was not really a convenient solution and it lacked some important features for source code management.

You can also look at third-party solutions like ToIncreaseSolutions and ifacto