Interact with Microsoft Business Central

1

There are best practices on how to interact with Microsoft Business Central and/or Microsoft Dynamics NAV, as far as I am concerned:

At first you may take into account whether the version of Microsoft Business Central you aim to use is capable of providing Web Services, what should be available from MS Dynamics NAV (former name of Business Central) since Version 2012.
If Web Services are available, I do strongly recommend to use them in order to retrieve data from NAV/BC or to inject data into NAV/BC. As Web Services are dealt through the middle tier of the solution and follow User Rights Management as well as business logics.

If Web Services are not available, you may read from the SQL database directly, though - to me - this is a security risk that I would want to avoid. Especially if WEBCON BPS is published to the public internet.
Injecting data into the NAV or BC database through SQL INSERT is not recommended, though possible. If you develop a table that is not connected to the ERP's business logic, you can use Inserts into it, the data then being processed through BC/NAV business logic.

Other options would be to use standard interface modules, such as YAVEON ProE-SCM for inserting data into NAV/BC by using the business logics itself.

Depending on your version and on the scenario my recommendation would be:
1) Use Web Services for smaller data sets or such being required close to real time.
2) Use Web Services to inject data into NAV/BC data tables by using the business logics of NAV/BC
3) SQL Read may be helpful for timely regular updates of larger tables into WEBCON BPS, like item static data
4) Connections from WEBCON BPS to the ERP's SQL database do require sophisticated security thoughts.
5) Standard Interface Modules such as YAVEON ProE-SCM will solve all issues, that may come up by directly reading from or inserting into the BC/NAV database.

In case of further questions please get in touch with me directly for further information.