Upgradability
Microsoft Dynamics NAV has a great track record of being upgradable from one version to the next. It is possible to upgrade all the way from the earliest MS-DOS versions of the product to the latest version running on Azure in the cloud.
This requires the application architects to be very careful in making decisions. Changes made to the application may live for many years or even decades.
When upgrading to newer versions, there are two big challenges.
- Code Upgrade: each time Microsoft ships a new version of the product, we have to see if the changes that we made to their code still function as intended. This requires not only merging code and testing of the application, but also doing a fit/gap analysis each time new functionality is added to the base application.
- Data Upgrade: if there are changes in the way the data is stored in the table objects, we have to provide software programs that convert the data from the old structure to the new structure. This is referred...