As I did take my youngest son out sleigh riding (in fact: the whole family), got outside and was marveled about the beauty in (almost) black and white, sat at the fire and pick-up my stamp collection, stayed in bed and read that one book, and played Ticket-to-Ride with my family, there’s one thing left to do before the turn of the year: write at least one of these posts that have been hanging in-the-air for sometime. [8-|]
And I must confess this provided me a very good alibi to get out of bed first before everybody else in the house on Silvester’s day; the last to get out has to treat all the others! [pi]
So what has been hanging in-the-air for sometime?
Among others, this one: the other day I was involved with this mibuso thread: COA sorting. Although the issue reported was a server issue, David Singleton and I got to talk about the localization to “… allow sorting […] in line with legal requirements”.
This whole localization thing kept on lingering in my mind. The issue was not new to me having been involved with quite a number of localizations. But you might recognize I always get a bit restless in case of useless/redundant efforts. Restless? Useless? How does this relate to COA Sorting you might wonder?
Have a look at this list David composed on GL Account as Text instead of Code. At least 7 countries do have a localization here, where the data type of the PK field of the G/L Account table has been changed form Code 20 to Text 20.
Big deal?
Well, yes, as this pervades a vast amount of objects especially if the local version also includes Cost Accounting. And for what use? Don’t get me wrong: this localization was useful and has been so far when running NAV on it’s proprietary database server. However, when running on SQL Server, there is no difference between the sorting on Code or Text fields. Or as David puts it: accounting sorting and telephone book sorting.
And now I am getting to my point: with version 7 NAV will only be running on SQL Server so this G/L Account localization will become superfluous. Hope like me MS has thought of that.
Epilogue
OK, this one is not hanging anymore. Finish. Basta. But one other is: did you ever play with the SQL Data Type property?
Thanx, Kitik.