Microsoft Dynamics NAV Administration: A quick guide to install, configure, deploy, and administer Dynamics NAV with ease

Classic client installation, also called a C/SIDE client, is more or less the same for all the versions of Navision Financials, Navision, Microsoft Business Solutions—Navision, or Dynamics NAV.

We have illustrated an example of 5.0 SP1 Dynamics NAV C/SIDE client installations as follows:

Starting with the startup screen of the installation disk, the process is fairly easy and well defined through the various installation stages. Click on C/SIDE Client for Microsoft Dynamics NAV under the Install section of the screen to run the installation wizard.

The installation process takes us through the setup wizard. In a network installation, we...

A C/SIDE database server has been renamed as the Dynamics NAV Classic database server with the release of Dynamics NAV 2009. This is essentially the Microsoft Dynamics NAV legacy database. The Dynamics NAV Classic database server incorporates the simplicity and easy-to-use features of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. It is a charm to maintain and manage this database. Traditionally, this database server has been used extensively (before the SQL Express option was provided). Let's walk through the installation process for this database server, before we discuss some specifics of this server.

We can either select the Install option from the auto-run setup for the product CD as shown in the following screen or we can explore the product CD and run setup.exe from the server folder and follow the installation wizard:

There are two options available while installing the Dynamics NAV Classic database server—Typical and Custom.

If we select Custom, the system will prompt...

Though the specifics of setting up a SQL Server database for NAV will be discussed in Chapter 6, Performance Tuning, this section describes the raw method of how to do it.

Open the shortcut for the Dynamics NAV Classic client for SQL (finsql.exe). Once there, go to File | Database | New. Specify the SQL Server name in the Server Name field; we may also lookup the SQL Server name with the drop-down Assist Edit button provided.

The next option is to select the type of authentication—Windows or Database Server Authentication. If Database Server Authentication is selected, the User ID and Password for the database login will have to be specified. If Windows Authentication is selected, the system uses a Windows user login to log on to the SQL Server database. It is worth mentioning that the user selected in this step must have appropriate permissions to create SQL databases.

The next window asks for the database name and shows...

Open the Dynamics NAV Classic client, also called the C/SIDE client in older versions. Go to File | Database | Open.

Specify the Dynamics NAV Classic database server name and select the authentication type.

On the Advanced tab, there is an option to select the network connection type that we wish to use for the connection to the server.

Click on the Dynamics NAV Classic client for SQL Server (finsql.exe) from File | Database | Open.

In addition to the SQL Server Name, we also need to specify the Database Name that we intend to connect to. The next step is to select the authentication type—Windows or Database Server Authentication.

Microsoft introduced a revolutionary client for the Dynamics NAV 2009 and subsequent version called the RoleTailored client for Dynamics NAV. The concept behind this client release is to give an experience to the user of Dynamics NAV, to be able to view their routine tasks and making it a lot easier for them to navigate across the pages and application areas. This is achieved by allowing Microsoft VAR(s), developers, certified consultants, and so on to create Role Centers for the Dynamics NAV users based on their day-to-day tasks. While doing so, an additional layer of application was introduced as a middle-layer component, called Dynamics NAV server. This layer essentially provides an additional level of security for the application and with the use of the Windows communications framework, opens up the application to Web services.

Let's walk through the process to install the Dynamics NAV 2009 RoleTailored client and also the Dynamics...

Dynamics NAV server is a Windows component service that runs as a middle tier for Dynamics NAV. The middle-tier executes the business logic for the Microsoft Dynamics RoleTailored clients and Web services.

The properties of the connection can be changed at the time of installing the Dynamics NAV server from the installation disk.

After installing the Dynamics NAV server from the installation disk, the properties of the connection are stored in the customsettings.config file as shown in the following screenshot:

A Dynamics NAV RoleTailored client connects to the Dynamics NAV server, which in turn connects to the SQL Server database. Essentially, the server name provided at the time of configuring Dynamics NAV connects us to the desired database. We can change the Dynamics NAV server that we are connecting to from the client, by using the option Select Server, as shown in the following screenshot:

A prompt then asks us for the relevant server address that we intend to connect to and the company in that server's database:

We saw illustrations of 5.0 SP1 Dynamics NAV C/SIDE client installations. This was followed by an installation of a C/SIDE database server. We then prepared a Microsoft SQL Server database for Dynamics NAV installation. Finally, we connected a Dynamics NAV client to the NAV Classic database server and Microsoft SQL Server database.

We also walked through the process of installing Dynamics NAV 2009 RoleTailored client and also the Dynamics NAV server—the middle-tier component, which gave us additional security to the application. Then we established a connection between the RoleTailored client and the database. We also saw how we can select the appropriate Dynamics NAV server from the client.