Dynamics Business Central / NAV Developer Digest - Vol. 469
ArcherPoint’s Developer Digest focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV development. This week’s volume includes using actionable errors, data type limitations, managing latency, and more in Business Central.
The Dynamics 365 Business Central community comprises professionals devoted to advancing the success of their customers. Developers, project managers, and consultants collaborate to share helpful information across blogs, forums, and social media sites. From discovering new solutions to finding answers to complex issues, these dedicated individuals are constantly sharing their knowledge with others. At ArcherPoint, we recognize and appreciate this highly engaged community’s creativity, hard work, and collective intelligence. To ensure all users can benefit from their expertise, we want to share their wealth of information with everyone.
Using actionable errors in BC to improve the user experience
Business Central 2023 release wave 2 included an enhanced error handling framework. This framework includes “actionable errors,” which provide a way to promote error dialogs and validation errors that recommend actions the user can take to resolve the problem.
These actions fall into two types: Fix-it actions and Show-it actions. Fix-it actions are used when the system already knows how to correct the error. Show-it actions are used when the system can tell the user where the error is located but needs the user to provide input to fix the problem.
Alberto Sobén, the Business Central Geek, shows how to use actionable error to improve the user experience in his blog, How to Improve Error Handling with Actionable Errors in Business Central.
Limitations of the SecretText data type
Another new feature in Business Central 2023 release wave 2 is the SecretText data type. This data type is intended to prevent sensitive values (user credentials, licensing tokens, etc.) from being seen using the AL debugger.
However, one of the limitations of SecretText is that you can’t use it to store sensitive values in Isolated Storage natively.
Stefano Demiliani discusses the problem and offers developers advice on working with this limitation until it is supported in Business Central, which is expected in BC 2024 release wave 1. Read his blog, Dynamics 365 Business Central: Isolated Storage and SecretText support, to learn more.
Managing latency in SaaS environments
All developers (and I think it’s safe to say ALL) have successfully tested their code on their local environment, where it worked fine, only to have it slow down to a crawl in production. Why is that? And, more importantly, how can we determine the impact BEFORE our code moves into production?
According to Duilio Tacconi, the flexibility of SaaS environments works by having Azure services linked together so they can scale independently. However, this independence comes at a cost: latency.
Find out more in his blog, The Truth about Latency.
Is your mobile device faster than a supercomputer?
Kyle H. shared an interesting post by Roy Longbottom, a 50-year veteran computer benchmarking and stress test expert. Longbottom performed benchmarking tests for Control Data’s CDC 7600 and the Cray 1, architected by Seymour Cray.
In his post, Longbottom compares the benchmarks for the Cray 1 from 1978 to today’s computers and mobile devices. The following quote says it all:
“In 1978, the Cray 1 supercomputer cost $7 Million, weighed 10,500 pounds, and had a 115 kilowatt power supply. It was, by far, the fastest computer in the world. The Raspberry Pi costs around $70 (CPU board, case, power supply, SD card), weighs a few ounces, uses a 5-watt power supply, and is more than 4.5 times faster than the Cray 1.”
Read Longbottom’s post, Cray 1 Supercomputer Performance Comparisons With Home Computers Phones and Tablets.
Interested in Dynamics NAV and Business Central development? Be sure to see our collection of NAV/BC Development Blogs.
Read “How To” blogs from ArcherPoint for practical advice on using Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Dynamics 365 Business Central.