Reports and Queries

“Data helps solve problems.”

– Anne Wojcicki

“The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.”

– John Tukey

In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, reports and queries are two ways to extract and output data for the purpose of presentation to a user (reports can also modify data). The user also has the ability to run Analysis Mode from list pages, but this is not something that developers can customize. Each of these objects uses tools and processes that are Business Central-based and work on data extraction. An example of this is XMLports, which can also extract and modify data. XMLports will be covered in Chapter 8, Extensibility beyond AL). In this chapter, we will focus on understanding the strengths of each of these tools and when and how they might be used. We will cover the Business Central side of both queries and reports in detail to describe how to obtain...