Dynamics User Group

Any known issues in taking SQL backups of a NAV database? Is there a prb in backing up linked obj's.

Shanil.

 Have a read of the post in this forum 'Recommended Maintenance Plan for Dynamics NAV on SQL 2005' as it not only covers SQL backups but general best practice (or discussions about) for SQL Server. If you're just asking about SQL backups there is a good chance you have not considered things like DB maintenance.

shanil:

Any known issues in taking SQL backups of a NAV database? Is there a prb in backing up linked obj's.

Shanil.

Backing up should not be an issue, but when restoring I always restore the linked database first, and then the NAV database. It works the other way as well, but sometime you get annoying error messages. 

Can I ask what is meant by 'linked database'? 

Legosz:

Can I ask what is meant by 'linked database'? 

Sure ask away....

Just kidding. ...

NAV allows you to link a NAV table to a view in another database. This linked view looks just like a normal NAV table, but in fact it exists in another SQL database. I use them a lot, but I know that some people don't like them. 

 Ok, that's interesting. I wasn't aware Nav could do that. Is there a document on how that works (or can I just ask more questions here)?

Legosz:

 Ok, that's interesting. I wasn't aware Nav could do that. Is there a document on how that works (or can I just ask more questions here)?

Ask away, I have posted about this a lot of times, so you could try searching as well. The feature first came in verion 2.00 of NAV, but never worked (because they would not sell the C/PLEX interface), but once the SQL option came out it worked.

The most usefull thing is when you are converting data. But not if ou have many records, because of the way the table is built in TempDB on SQL.

Legosz:

 Ok, that's interesting. I wasn't aware Nav could do that. Is there a document on how that works (or can I just ask more questions here)?

Start here http://dynamicsuser.net/search/SearchResults.aspx?q=linked+table

if you find an interesting thread, bump it.

Legosz:

 Ok, that's interesting. I wasn't aware Nav could do that. Is there a document on how that works (or can I just ask more questions here)?

If I’m not incorrect in SQL Server Option doc there was a chapter about that.

 I've done a little playing and looking through some of the posts.

 I create a table called 'Test Table' on Nav, and from what I understand it will now be looking for "<company name>$Test Table" in SQL. Is Nav only able to look into its database for the table/view?

If you have the table in another datasae, just crete a view in the NAV database that points to that external table.

By the way its easier if you set the option "Common to all companies" to YES so you don't need the company name, just the table name.

I hoped that would be the answer.

I could see how you could create some really cool solutions using that, and get yourself into trouble in the process if you weren't careful.

Most of linked tables that I have used were to link tables between Navision and a external system (Web portals, etc) it's trickier because of type conversion (NULL, auto increment, etc). Between 2 Navision databases works like magic.