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I have a Navision 2.01B installation, we're upgrading to new (Not Nav) software and need data extracted from our 800mb Navision database

From what I see, I have a Navision license file that doesn't allow c/odbc connections.

Any suggestions which direction to start?

Run each table and copy and paste to Excel. Or use dataports.

I'm running into some issues with the "run, copy to excel" method.. Although i'm logged in as someone with superuser rights, i'm getting errors that i don't have read permissions on some tables.

Also, i'm getting some hangups and memory errors on some of the larger tables.. so i'm not sure how feasible this method is. (I'll keep working it though, maybe throw the DB on a more powerful server if i can find one to dig past the memory limitations...

Any suggestions to get up to speed on Dataports? I'm going to start digging through documentation now.

And thanks for the quick response! It's given me some great direction and a good bite into the project.

Your quickest, cheapest and simplest solution is to contact a Navision partner, and pay them to convert it to a SQL database for you. Also you will then have someone you can call to ask "What does this field do?".

I'm not really sure if moving to SQL will add much. You may run into issues with double object names, illegal dates, characters etc.

What do you want to convert? When I implement NAV at a new customer I usually convert masterdata, current inventory, AR, etc.

If you are not familiar with how NAV works, you might want to call some help though. It can be tempting to export Item Ledger Entries in order to find current inventory rather than using the "Flowfields".

I think the best way to move forward is to use the dataports on Master Data and include the nessesairy flowfields. Or hire Alex and/or David.

Good luck on the project.

Oh and, just curious, why are you moving away from NAV?

The backstory is that we're migrating from a Navision 2.01 bolted to a proprietary contact management database specific to our sector to an all in one solution by a pretty reputable provider.

The contact management stuff was in Foxpro and is very accessible, this Navision being in C/Side is kind of a hangup, because as you said, if you're not a Navision provider, conversion tools are not readily available.

The firm has done a number of Microsoft NAV data imports, and if my data resided in a newer more accessible MSSQL environment, i'd be able to shoot it over, they'd be familiar enough to convert, map, and do an initial import for our testing.

The last issue is i'm probably going to need to do it twice, once to get data for the testing phase, and once for the live data when we flip the switch.

Are you sure?

If they had done this before, then they would know how extremely simple it would be to get this data into a newer version of the NAV executables. And if they have the tools for the newer versions they can still use them on older versions of Navision.

But Mark is right, that you probably don't need all that data, its just that I always found that getting the data in SQL made it just easier to handle. With dataports there always seem to be things like CSV delimiter issues etc. Copy paste is slow and cumbersome.

Anyway if you need help, just holler.

We had a separate CRM system with middleware that integrated our contact management to our accounting, the two separate systems worked best for our needs 12 years ago when we implemented it, but the company we're moving to is a more complete solution tailored more to our sector. A NAV upgrade would have required customizations this solution already accounts for.

I must have miscommunicated.. they are not Navision Partners and don't have any Navision tools.. They are looking to receive the data in a "common format" like SQL, XLS, MDB, CSV, TXT... C/SIDE is not on their list, and i have been tasked with either extracting or converting the existing company data residing in the native Navision DB to something "accessible"

That makes sense.

Personally I would still go with just moving the whole thing to a SQL DB.

I would too. How is that accomplished?

From what i've read, it seems like a pretty straight forward procedure if you're upgrading to NAV, otherwise it seems i'd have to hire a Navision Partner.

Basically yes. You upgrade to SQL, then just throe Navision away and you are left with a SQL database.

800mb Navision database isn't that big - what's your issues with dataports?

The issue comes down to who will do it. the key issue here is that the company working with the database doesn't know how to write Navision dataports. So someone would have to sit at both ends to say "what data do we need". And that means a cost in man hours. of course I guess you could just write dataports and export everything, but that would probably be more work than converting to SQL.

One the DB is in SQL they can just send to the new company and since that company already have experience with converting NAV SQL dbs, the learning curve should be less.

If they were having a Navision partner do this, then I agree dataports would be the way to go. But with non Navision people involved, SQL seems a safer (aka in the long run cheaper) solution.

Another option, is that most Navision end users ended out purchasing the Dataport designer, so maybe they have someone ( a power user) that could learn to write dataports and do it internally. But again it needs a NAV partner at least for training, and since they are leaving Navision, there is not a huge incentive for a partner to invest the time in a one of as small as this.

I guess it also depends on what this new system actually just needs.

Are you looking to extract everything or just the main tables...??
like Item, Customer, Vendor, payment terms, salesperson/purchaser, etc.

That really simplifies the project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lo2ytGJiSE