Introduction

Although reports are similar to pages, they serve a different purpose in NAV. Pages exist primarily for data entry while reports show a higher-level view of what is going on in the database. Reports can be customer-facing documents, such as order confirmations and invoices or used for internal analysis, such as aged accounts receivables and aged accounts payable. They can also be used to process large amounts of data.

As developers, it is our job to design the dataset and visual layout of these reports. First, we use the Report Dataset Designer in Microsoft Dynamics NAV Development Environment to define the dataset of the report by choosing table as dataItem and field, variable, expression, or a text constant as column. Next, we design Client Report Definition Layout (RDLC) for reports that are used to print or display data. We use the Visual Studio report designer to design an RDLC layout. The following table will help to understand the different types of reports:

Report type...