Virtual table
| Dataverse/Dynamics |
|---|
|
|
1500+ connectors to other systems (SAP, Salesforce, Amazon, SharePoint...) make Dataverse a vital data hub. With virtual tables and Resco mobile apps, all the data is available on your device, even offline.
What are virtual tables
Virtual tables (also known as virtual entities) enable the integration of data residing in external systems by seamlessly representing that data as tables in Microsoft Dataverse, without replication of data and often without custom coding(Microsoft documentation).
Since release 16.0, virtual tables can also be used in Resco mobile apps, both online and offline. Since release 16.1, users of the mobile apps can create, update, and delete records for these tables. This function is available for tables with a ModifiedOn column (more precisely, any column containing the record's last modification date).
Configuration in Woodford
Virtual tables can be made available in the app projects using Woodford, just like standard tables.
- Edit an app project in Woodford.
- Select the virtual table from the list of entities in the Project menu.
- Click Enable to add the table to your project.
- Select the fields that you want to include. Don't forget to enable the "modifiedon" column.
- Save all changes.
Synchronization strategy
Most tables use "versionnumber" for incremental synchronization. Unfortunately, virtual tables don't have this column. As a fallback, we can use the "modifiedon" column instead. This is the timestamp of the last modification of the record. It must be properly configured in Woodford.
If the table has a column that behaves as "modifiedon", we support create, update, and delete operations on this table, as well as incremental sync. The standard conflict resolution behavior applies.
Without this column, the only supported synchronization strategy is full sync. The table is read-only in the app.
Performance
The performance of virtual tables can be somewhat lower than standard tables. Dataverse acts only as the middleman, involving additional communication with the external data source.
Moreover, synchronization can be slower. More precisely, the upload of virtual tables requires extra requests when checking for possible conflicts.