Prism for AL

Developer productivity for Business Central

Prism for AL is our code browser and analysis tool for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Total solution overview

Module details and dependency graph, table relations graph and more

Rich code browsing experience

Extended object view, semantic code coloring, VSCode integration, etc.

Powerful analysis

Find usages, find system function usages, semantic filtering, and much more

Total solution overview

Flexible options for opening a solution

We include source code of dependencies when available, so you get the full solution overview. When source code is not available for an app, we include symbol information from the .app file (most information apart from procedure and trigger bodies.)

Prism for AL: Open Visual Studio Code .code-workspace file

Prism for AL: Open a folder of Visual Studio Code projects or .al source files and packages

Prism for AL: Open a single package (.app file)

Open workspace: Opens a Visual Studio Code .code-workspace file.
Open folder: Opens a folder of Visual Studio Code projects or .al source files and packages (.app.)
Open package: Opens a single package (.app file.)

What is your solution made of?

The solution page provides a quick overview of which modules (apps) the solutions consists of and how they are related.

Prism for AL: Solution page module overview

Modules

Metadata from app.json
Number of objects per type

Dependencies

Used By—inbound dependencies
Usings—outbound dependencies
Navigate between dependencies

Tame the complexity and make sense of it all

Awareness and understanding of module dependencies is key. A picture says more than 1000 dependency declarations—that's why Prism generates a dependency graph for your solution.

Prism for AL: Graph of dependencies between modules (app.json dependencies, application, platform) and propagated dependencies

Visually traverse dependencies
Propagated dependencies (e.g. Application)
Modules with only symbols marked with asterisk (*)
Flexible display options, e.g. version constraints

Filter, group and order objects as you like

Quickly locate objects with flexible object filtering. By default, objects are grouped by module and object type and modules are sorted by 'topological order' induced by the module dependencies.

Prism for AL object index — Filter objects by name 'parts', object number, object number ranges or combine with '|'

Prism for AL object index grouping and sorting — Configure grouping and ordering

Prism for AL object-level menu — Object context menu

Rich code browsing experience

Designed so you get insight quicker

Structured and colourful. Declaration identifiers have context menus (e.g. "Find usages") and identifiers that reference a declaration have rich tooltips and are linked to the declaration. Object references include information about the defining module.

Prism for AL: Structured view of a page — Structured view of a page

Prism for AL lists the object's extensions — List of object extensions

Prism for AL: Object references are annotated with their defining module — Object references in e.g. variables include defining module

Inlined extension elements provide a consolidated object view

In the "Extended" view, which is the default view, we inline all declarations from extended objects as if they were included in the base object. Elements "imported" like that are marked with an arrow (🠔) in front of the element name. Click the arrow to navigate to the extension object.

Prism for AL: Page extension adds a field to the base page with addbefore — Page extension that adds field `Group Member Submissions` before base page's `VATReturnStatus`.

Prism for AL: Extended page shows added fields inlined — Extended view of base page shows extension object's `Group Member Submissions` before `VATReturnStatus`.

Turbo charged code reading speed

In general, developers spend a lot more time reading than writing code. This is especially true with AL, as Business Central's base application alone has around half a million lines of code. So code reading speed matters. And semantic code colouring helps.

Examples

Type/namespace
Built-in instance methods
Commit
Delete
Temporary record

Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are

Understand the purpose of an object better by looking at how it relates to other objects. Answer questions like "Which pages have a certain table as SourceTable?"

Prism for AL: object dependencies - used by and using - drill-down into actual usages

Overview

Usings (outbound) and usages (inbound)
Checkmark indicates existence of kind of dependency

Go Deeper

Find usages on each object dependency via context menu
Follow dependency chain by left-clicking on dependency objects
Search objects to reduce candidates

Find your way in the current object

Outlines the current object as a tree structure for overview and navigation purposes. Use wildcard filter to restrict to what you are looking for. Configure what you want to see, e.g. 'only extensions' (🠔 Extensions) if you want to see how a base object is extended.

Prism for AL: Object outline with filtering — Object outline filtered to 'item'

Prism for AL: Object outline settings, e.g. filter an extended object to only show what is added by extensions — Filtered to show only items that are added by an extension (🠔 Extensions)

Browse and analyse in Prism—edit in Visual Studio Code

Seemless two-way integration between Prism for AL and Visual Studio Code gives you easy access to Prism functionality in your daily work. The integration from Prism to Visual Studio Code is enabled for any source object which is located in your Visual Studio Code workspace folder. Navigation from Visual Studio Code to Prism requires Prism for AL Connector.

From Visual Studio Code, navigate to current location in Prism for AL — From Visual Studio Code to Prism for AL

From Prism for AL, go to line in Visual Studio Code — From Prism for AL to Visual Studio Code

Powerful analysis

Find usages of anything from anywhere

Find usages of any declaration (object, procedure, field, key, control etc) in any module across your whole solution. Right-click any declaration to invoke. Prism finds usages even in symbol files (where available). Save time by using result filters to narrow down the number of results.

Prism for AL: Find usages and filter to where a field is assigned a value — Field usages filtered to where the field is assigned a value. Invoke new *find usages* directly from the usages window.

How did we get this data into the database?

Find system function usages allows you to quickly answer questions like the one above. Select which instance methods you search for. For table functions like Insert, save time by narrowing the result to non-temporary records.

Prism for AL: Invoke find system function usages from object-level menu — 1. Invoke function from e.g. object index

Prism for AL: Select system functions to find usages of — 2. Select instance method(s) to search for

Prism for AL: Find system function usages result. Filter table functions usages to where the table is non-temporary. — 3. Filter result to non-temporary, if required

Find events fit for your purpose

Developing in AL necessitates a lot of searching for appropriate integration and business events to subscribe to. Unless you are 100% familiar with an event, use Find usages on the event, so you understand exactly when and how the event is raised.

Prism for AL: Event search based on event name pattern — Search for events where name matches `on*notification`.

Prism for AL: Event usages - where is the event raised and subscribed? — Usages of event `OnAfterNotificationSent`: raised twice and subscribed once.

Explore your data model visually

Understanding the data model is crucial for efficient AL development. With approximately 1500 tables in Microsoft's base application alone, presenting the full data model in one diagram in not an option. Instead, Prism for AL lets you explore the data model gradually.

Prism for AL: Explore table relations by adding new in- and outbount relations

Right-click the start table
Immediate in- and outbound table relations are shown
Navigate to objects and table relation definitions
Expand diagram by exploring in- and outbound relations

Performance troubleshooting for Business Central is impossible without the use of Prism for AL. It’s the fastest way to search across extensions for usages of fields and keys. I could not do my job without Prism for AL.

Everything I need for AL code analysis in one tool.
And it’s blazing fast.

From within Prism for AL you can open the object in VSCode and the other way round! So I'm using Prism for AL as a base tool to explore and then do modification in VSCode.

Prism for AL is irreplaceable. Best solution analyzer since … I guess since Prism for C/AL.

Prism for AL has some unique features to discover your full AL stack which is not possible with VSCode.

Ready to sign up?

If you would like to know more before you decide, then please visit our extensive documentation or the subscription FAQ. Also, feel free to contact us with any questions or suggestions you may have.

Sign up