Part 1, Integrating Visual Studio 2012 LightSwitch and Dynamics NAV OData.

OData is on of new exciting features Microsoft has added to MS Dynamics NAV 2013, which has a good impact on simplifying NAV integration.

Many good blogs and articles are out there that address Dynamics NAV OData feature consumed by Excel and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS); where in this blog we are going to use Visual Studio LightSwitch HTML Client which simplifies rapid client applications development, a tool can be used by information workers and developers to deliver proof of concept applications or even a full fledge application startups.

Another key point in this blog is to show you how to connect related entities from Dynamics NAV in LightSwitch using Query Parameter and Parameter Binding property which is not straight forward as it is when consuming relational databases data with referential integrity.

Visual Studio 2012 LightSwitch HTML Client

LightSwitch Silverlight Client application type was included in Visual Studio 2012 release, but later on Microsoft released LightSwitch HTML Client. Visual Studio LightSwitch Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lightswitch/ is a good starting point to install and read more about LightSwitch.

Browsing Sales Person Customers Application

We will start by looking what we are trying to accomplish here and that is to build  HTML client application to assist sales persons to browse their customers of course that data all is coming straight from Navision database.

This application also serves a good starting point to build Windows 8 application that can run on Windows desktops, tablet pcs and Windows phones.

Below is a screen shot of the application we are going to build

Development Steps Summary:

Below steps are covered in details in part 2 of this blog which is Navision part.

1- Build Dynamics NAV 2013 objects.

2- Expose NAV objects as web services.

Below steps are covered in details in part 3 of this blog which is Visual Studio 2012 LightSwitch Html Client .

3- Build Visual Studio 2012 LightSwitch Html Client application.

4- Add NAV OData to LightSwitch application.

5- Build Sales Persons & Customers browsing screen.

6- Connect Sales Persons List with related Customers.

Next...
Step by step developing Dynamics NAV objects (Part 2)