Dynamics Business Central / NAV Development Developer Digest - Vol 399
ArcherPoint’s Developer Digest focuses on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV development. In Developer Digest Volume 399, you’ll read how to use variables to get data into Azure DevOps Pipelines and how Linux may soon lose support for the DECnet protocol.
The Dynamics NAV and Business Central community, including the ArcherPoint technical staff, is made up of developers, project managers, and consultants who are constantly communicating, with the common goal of sharing helpful information with one another to help customers be more successful.
As they run into issues and questions, find the answers, and make new discoveries, they post them on blogs, forums, social media…fot everyone’s benefit. We in Marketing watch these interactions and never cease to be amazed by the creativity, dedication, and brainpower we’re so fortunate to have in this community—so we thought, wouldn’t it be great to share the wealth of information with everyone who might not have the time to check out the multitude of resources out there?
Thus, the ArcherPoint Microsoft Dynamics NAV/BC Developer Digest was born. Each week, we present a collection of thoughts and findings from NAV/BC experts and devotees around the world. We hope these insights will benefit you, too.
Using Variables to Get Data into Azure DevOps Pipelines
James Pearson asks @AzureDevOps, “Is it possible to set the pool and agent for a deploy job from a variable? The value of the variable is set by the output of an earlier job. I want to dynamically route the deployment to the correct agent. Thanks.”
He gets help from the Twitterverse while awaiting a reply:
Tobias Fenster offers: “Not a direct answer to your question, but maybe to the initial problem: We use capabilities to exactly identify the agent. We spin up a new agent for every build with dynamics capabilities and then use that in the pipeline. Maybe this could also be a way for you to solve it.”
James replies: “Thanks, yes I’m using the demands property of the pool to specify the agent name i.e. demands: – http://agent.name -equals ${{ parameters.Agent }}.”
David Feldhoff gives his advice: “We’re changing the pool/agent by parameter. Not for a deployment job, but it should be possible the same way. pool: name: ${{parameters.poolName}}.”
Erik Ernst replies “It works with “fixed” parameters/variables, but not with RunTime parameters/variables.” James agrees, “Thanks, that was the conclusion I was reluctantly coming to. I wanted to set the pool and agent with variables at runtime, but I couldn’t get it to work with any of the syntax styles.” Erik then offers, “Took me a while to figure that out too. The only variables you can use are the those available (for templates) when the Yaml files are generated.”
Read more about Using Predefined Variables to get data into your Azure DevOps Pipelines.
Linux May Soon Lose Support for the DECnet Protocol
Kyle shares a story: “Back in the early 90s, I (among others on my team) built an international network with 10,000 Macintoshes that spoke DECNet and AppleTalk. The only reason we had to bother with inferior protocols like TCP/IP was because that was all the Cisco routers on the network could talk.
Old guy observation: Had OSI actually won the battle of the protocols, we would not have problems today like spam email. Certificate validation and authentication was built in at a protocol level, even for X.409 email and X.509 name resolution.”
Read the article, Linux May Soon Lose Support for the DECnet Protocol.
Interested in Dynamics NAV and/or 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.