Dynamics NAV 2009 R2 is not a "normal" release ... beware! - Dynamics CRM: Blogs

Blog bot · 14.01.2011, 14:38

I would like to point out quite an important thing to be aware of. Namely that NAV 2009 R2 is mainly intended to be some kind of hotfix on SP1, rather then being a new release. What I mean with that is that (and this has been confirmed by Microsoft) R2 is not "a complete new version".

How do I know?

When we were upgrading our database(s) to R2, we noticed that the VAT2010 (remember that one?) was not part of the BE version of NAV 2009 R2. In my opinion, that's rather odd. So that's when I contacted Microsoft. They were actually surprised with my question .. . I was surprised that they were surprised .. so I contacted a few partners .. and they also were very surprised (even more people surprised...) that R2 didn't include any functional fix whatsoever .. . So now I'm telling you .. and may be now everyone is surprised! :-).

And in fact, you shouldn't be (at least, that's what Microsoft told me ... ), because all info about this, is out there. The question is: did you read it? I didn't. Here it is, in case you might wonder:

Microsoft re-send this information after my "complaint" with the words "I really hope partners will take the time in reading this documentation before starting with R2"... . So .. READ!

So what is Microsoft's strategy about this?

Well, it's actually not all that bad. In my opinion (I didn't get this confirmed), to be able to release for as many countries as possible (43, was it?), changes had to be as small as possible, so number of tests could be at a minimum. So they took the releases that were already there (NAV 2009 SP1 - without any hotfix, update, ... ) and only changed the objects, necessary for the R2 features. This way, we got it much earlier, for all countries. Else, Belgium probably would have gotten it in a year or so, and Turkey in 2017 ..

. So in a way, we must accept it, know what we have to do, and be glad with this approach .. .

So what is R2?

Well, just don't accept R2 as being a new updated release of SP1, but rather as a combined platform update (new runtime version of the clients) with a series of new features (the new objects).

It's not that simple, is it?

No, it's not .. sorry. Together with stating that R2 is "a new runtime version", rises another problem to be aware of.

You might remember the list of platform updates I put up once in a while. And you might have noticed that for NAV 2009 SP1, there are already quite a few updates .. all new exe's, all fixes of some kind.

Well .. fact is that not all fixes that were applied on SP1 are already part of R2 .. and I don't know how many fixes we are talking about. All I know is an assumption of one of the support engineers: The hotfix nodes were split back in September 2010 .. which means (I think) that all hotfixes that were addressed from September are NOT part of the R2 product.. .

What's your experience with the R2 Runtime than?

Well, I don't have one negative experience in any way with the R2 runtime - given of course that it's still very young. It even seems to be faster and more stable ... .

Even, we have an issue with the latest build of SP1 (which should be newer), that is fixed in R2 (which should be older..). I'm not going into it too deep (it's about a field in a list that should be editable in SP1, but isn't .. while it is in R2...). So that is the vica versa logic .. .

OK, I'm really confusing you now, don't I. Sorry for that .. but I'm confused as well. My opinion? R2 gives much more then SP1 .. so me personally, I just go for R2! :-)

Conclusion

The conclusion is just that you have to be aware of certain things:

R2 is a set of objects you have to build in an (upgraded) SP1 database if you need one of the added application features:
- CRM Connector
- Online Services for ERP
- System Indicator
R2 doesn't contain all platform updates. TEST, before you go live, and know that you might need to do a hotfix in a few weeks or months. But if you don't have any reason .. go for R2!