This morning I had a presentation for customers and partners about how to
interop with Microsoft Navision and how Navision could be exposed on the web.
One of the slides I've presented showed this schema:
The question I've received was immediate: why Visual Studio .NET is the piece
that brings together all the infrastructure?
A big enterprise architecture with an ERP software like Navision, an intranet
portal and a web portal will be always more .NET oriented and Visual Studio
applications will be always more the key for interoperability.
The scope of my presentation was to launch a clear idea of an enterprise
application built around the Navision database core: the new Employee
Portal, based on Microsoft Sharepoint, could be an interesting
piece for the Intranet side of the infrastructure, while .NET
applications like ASP.NET pages and Web Services could be
the core for the web-side.
Navision is based on SQL Server as backend, so it's totally open on
interoperability. The new 4.0 SP1 version (not only a Service Pack!!)
is ready for .NET not only for the web but also on the native Navision database
(with C/FRONT .NET).
.NET Web Services are always more one of the most important pieces
of interoperability of big architectures that works around Navision and they're
one of the main solutions that we have now to put Navision on the web and on the
mobile devices.
With this architectural vision, I think you can answer by yourself why Visual
Studio is the point of connection... 