Can we use NAV 2009 objects in older versions?

A guy I know wanted to reuse objects from NAV 2009 in a NAV 5.0 SP1 but had some difficulties by doing it.

In the Navision versions below 2009 you could easily reuse objects. For example there were no problems in moving objects between NAV 4 and NAV 5. So why are there problems when moving objects from NAV 2009 to NAV 5.0 SP1?

Most users will think there is no problem, due to the fact that NAV 2009 is basically just a NAV 5.0 SP2 – but they will get wiser.

NAV 2009 is a 3-tier version where NAV 5.0 SP1 is “just” a 2-tier version, so here was the first difference.

Furthermore in NAV 2009 new functionality has been introduced with the RoleTailored Client – such as Pages and possibility for designing Reports in Visual Studio. All this will give problems when “downgrading” objects to an earlier version.

So what to do? So fare I know, does there not exist a tool for downgrading the objects, so you have to do it yourself.

This can be done in the following steps:

1. Export the object to text
2. Remove 5.0 incompatible code, e.g. the sections RDLDATA, REQUESTPAGE and controls like DataSetFieldName
3. Re-import the text object in a 5.0 database
4. Compile it and “cross your fingers” hopefully it will now work

I cannot guarantee that this will work for all objects, especially those that are fully integrated with the new functionality will properly not work – but you never knows, it might also work 😉