LINQ to Dynamics NAV Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the Dynamics NAV via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for Dynamics NAV. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData Dynamics NAV Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Before you can connect, OData Services will need to be enabled on the server. Once OData Services are enabled, you will be able to query any Services that are published on the server.

   The User and Password properties, under the Authentication section, must be set to valid Dynamics NAV user credentials. In addition, specify a URL to a valid Dynamics NAV server organization root and a ServerInstance. If there is not a Service Default Company for the server, set the Company as well.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   http://myserver:7048;User=myserver\Administrator;Password=admin;ServerInstance=DYNAMICSNAV71;

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting DynamicsNAVEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

DynamicsNAVEntities context = new DynamicsNAVEntities();

var customerQuery = from customer in context.Customer
 select customer;

foreach (var result in customerQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Name);
}

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.