Integration Tools

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 provides several integration tools that can be used inside or outside of Microsoft Dynamics NAV to integrate to other applications.

Web Services

Web services are a standardized way for independent software systems to

communicate with one another over standard Internet protocols. Web services architecture is designed for dynamic program-to-program interaction.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 supports Web services, which makes it easy to integrate Microsoft Dynamics NAV with other systems. This is possible with the introduction of Microsoft Dynamics NAV Server.

There are several types of Web service in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009:

•The simplest Web service type is developed by using the page

object. By using the page object, Microsoft Dynamics NAV

constructs a default Web service that has a fixed set of methods.

Generally, it corresponds to general data access, such as get and set

individual values or retrieves and updates lists of values.

•Another Web service type involves including codeunits and the

functions from those codeunits in the Web service.

•The last type of Web service includes the ability to pass complex

data types by using an XMLport object as a parameter in a codeunit

function.

ODBC

Open DataBase Connectivity, or ODBC, is a standard database access method developed by Microsoft. The goal of ODBC is to make it possible to access any data from any application regardless of which database management system (DBMS) is handling the data. ODBC manages the access of data by inserting a middle layer called a database driver between an application and the DBMS.

The purpose of the middle layer is to translate the application’s data queries into commands that the DBMS understands. For this to work, both the application and the DBMS must be ODBC-compliant; that is, the application must be capable of issuing ODBC commands and the DBMS must be capable of responding to them.

C/FRONT

C/FRONT is an application programming interface that can be used to access a Microsoft Dynamics NAV database. C/FRONT facilitates high-level interaction with the Microsoft Dynamics NAV database and enables developers to manipulate any Microsoft Dynamics NAV database.

The central component of C/FRONT is a library of C functions. These functions provide access to every aspect of data storage and maintenance, and enable the integration of both standard and custom applications with a Microsoft Dynamics

NAV database.

C/FRONT comes as a DLL for direct linkage with a program and also as an OCX that a program can use.

OCX

OLE Custom control, or OCX, is an independent program module that can beaccessed by other programs in a Microsoft® Windows® environment. OCXcontrols end with an .ocx extension. OCX controls represent Microsoft’s secondgeneration of control architecture, the first being VBX controls written in VisualBasic.

Both VBX and OCX controls have now been superseded by Microsoft ActiveX®controls. However, ActiveX is backward compatible with OCX controls whichmeans that ActiveX containers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer can execute

OCX components.

There is a vast array of commercially available OCXs that perform a variety of

tasks and developers can produce their own. They can use tools such as

Microsoft Visual C++ or Visual Basic to create OCXs that can be called by

Microsoft Dynamics NAV.