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You're reading from  Programming Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central - Sixth Edition

Product typeBook
Published inApr 2019
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781789137798
Edition6th Edition
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Authors (3):
Marije Brummel
Marije Brummel
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Marije Brummel

Author, programmer, consultant, project manager, presenter, evangelist, sales person, and a trainer. It's next to impossible to find someone as experienced as Marije Brummel in the Business Central community. Marije received the Microsoft MVP and the NAVUG All-Star awards among several others. She has chaired the Dynamics Credentialing committee and has authored official Microsoft Exam materials. She's the go-to girl for performance troubleshooting and upgrade challenges. One of her biggest achievements was introducing Design Patterns into the Business Central community. Her books, blog articles, and YouTube videos have influenced almost everyone involved with Business Central. She enjoys the outdoors with her dog and loves spending time with her family.
Read more about Marije Brummel

David Studebaker
David Studebaker
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David Studebaker

David Studebaker has been designing and developing software since 1962 as a developer, consultant, manager, and business owner. In 1967, David coauthored the first general-purpose SPOOL system, an AT&T / IBM joint project. He has been a founding partner in several firms, most recently Studebaker Technology and Liberty Grove Software. David's publications include a decade of technical reviews for ACM Computing Reviews and a number of articles on shop floor data collection. David originated the Packt series of books on programming Dynamics Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV). He has a BS in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a life member of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Read more about David Studebaker

Christopher D. Studebaker
Christopher D. Studebaker
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Christopher D. Studebaker

Chris Studebaker was a certified environmental consultant working with manufacturing facilities to meet national and state regulations before he started working with Navision in 1999. After working on regulatory reporting, data analysis, project management, and subcontractor oversight, Chris has used those skills to sell, develop, and implement NAV for the past 20 years. He has specialized in retail, manufacturing, job shop, and distribution implementations, mostly in high-user-count, high-data-volume applications. Chris acts in a consulting and training role for customers and for peer NAV professionals. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Northern Illinois University and has done graduate work at Denmark Technical University.
Read more about Christopher D. Studebaker

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Creating a simple table

The easiest way to create a table the easiest way is by using snippets. To use snippets, Visual Studio Code needs to understand that our file is written in the AL language. This is simply done by saving the file with the .al extension. We will save our newly created file using File | Save and using a name that makes sense later. Let's use Radio Show.al for now:

Now, we can use the snippet called ttable. If we type in the letters tta, IntelliSense will suggest this snippet:

This snippet creates content for our file and sets the cursor on the place where we need to define the object ID:

We will type 50100 and use Tab to go to the next field, object name, where we will type "Radio Show".

The snippet has already created a field with the default ID of 1. The field name is MyField and the type is Integer. We will change the name to "No." and the type to Code [20].

The next field can be field number 2. Sometimes, it is useful to leave large gaps (such as jumping from 80 to 200 or 500) when the next set of fields has a particular purpose that isn't associated with the prior set of fields.

The fields combining the primary key can use numbers up to nine since they are very unlikely to change. If this is changed at a later date, then a substantial amount of refactoring has to be done.

The Business Central online documentation says to not leave gaps in field numbers. Based on many years of experience, we disagree. Leaving numbering gaps will allow us to add additional fields between existing fields at a later date, if necessary. The result will be data structures that are (at least initially) easier to read and understand. Once a table is referenced by other objects or contains any data, the field numbers of the previously defined fields should not be changed.

The following screenshot shows our new table definition in the table designer:

Note that you can remove anything you don't need from the snippet. In our case, we removed the DataClassification and keys sections, the variable declaration, and triggers.
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Authors (3)

author image
Marije Brummel

Author, programmer, consultant, project manager, presenter, evangelist, sales person, and a trainer. It's next to impossible to find someone as experienced as Marije Brummel in the Business Central community. Marije received the Microsoft MVP and the NAVUG All-Star awards among several others. She has chaired the Dynamics Credentialing committee and has authored official Microsoft Exam materials. She's the go-to girl for performance troubleshooting and upgrade challenges. One of her biggest achievements was introducing Design Patterns into the Business Central community. Her books, blog articles, and YouTube videos have influenced almost everyone involved with Business Central. She enjoys the outdoors with her dog and loves spending time with her family.
Read more about Marije Brummel

author image
David Studebaker

David Studebaker has been designing and developing software since 1962 as a developer, consultant, manager, and business owner. In 1967, David coauthored the first general-purpose SPOOL system, an AT&T / IBM joint project. He has been a founding partner in several firms, most recently Studebaker Technology and Liberty Grove Software. David's publications include a decade of technical reviews for ACM Computing Reviews and a number of articles on shop floor data collection. David originated the Packt series of books on programming Dynamics Business Central (aka Dynamics NAV). He has a BS in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a life member of the Association for Computing Machinery.
Read more about David Studebaker

author image
Christopher D. Studebaker

Chris Studebaker was a certified environmental consultant working with manufacturing facilities to meet national and state regulations before he started working with Navision in 1999. After working on regulatory reporting, data analysis, project management, and subcontractor oversight, Chris has used those skills to sell, develop, and implement NAV for the past 20 years. He has specialized in retail, manufacturing, job shop, and distribution implementations, mostly in high-user-count, high-data-volume applications. Chris acts in a consulting and training role for customers and for peer NAV professionals. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Northern Illinois University and has done graduate work at Denmark Technical University.
Read more about Christopher D. Studebaker