How I used the Strategy pattern in AL to build a maintainable Business Central extension

Yahya Touil — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:33:17 +0000

Most AL developers have written this at least once:

case Strategy of 
 Standard: 
   Score := CalculateStandard(...); 
 Weighted: 
   Score := CalculateWeighted(...); 
end;

It works.

Until you add more strategies.

Then the calculator starts knowing about every scoring algorithm, and every new strategy means modifying existing business logic.

For my AL Strategy Pattern Risk Engine, I wanted to separate the scoring algorithms from the calculator.

The core pattern is simple:

Interface + Enum = selectable strategy

interface ICFRRiskStrategy
{
    procedure CalculateScore(Customer: Record Customer): Decimal;
}

Each scoring strategy implements the same interface.

The TY Risk Strategy enum defines the available strategies and maps each enum value to its corresponding implementation.

The calculator can then work with the selected strategy instead of knowing which specific implementation is being used:

Score := Strategy.CalculateScore(Customer);
The project currently includes two strategies:

Standard
→ returns a fixed baseline score of 50.

Weighted
→ calculates the score using customer information such as blocked status, missing credit limit, and balance due exceeding the credit limit.

The extension also includes:

Configurable scoring rules through a setup table instead of hardcoded weights and thresholds.
Risk levels that classify the resulting score as Low, Medium, or High.
Risk Assessment Log that records each assessment, including the customer, strategy, score, level, user, and date/time.
A calculator that handles validation, strategy execution, score classification, and logging.
A read-only assessment history providing an audit trail of the evaluations.

The main thing I wanted to demonstrate with this project is how AL interfaces and enum implementations can be used to implement the Strategy pattern without putting every scoring algorithm inside one calculator.

It keeps the scoring logic separated and makes the extension easier to extend when another strategy is needed.

Full architecture breakdown 👉 https://yahyatouil.com/posts/building-al-strategy-pattern-risk-engine/

Source code 👉 https://github.com/yahyatouil-dev/bc-al-strategy-pattern-risk-engine

I built 7 VS Code tools for Business Central developers because the workflow pain was real

Yahya Touil — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:26:32 +0000

Field 19 of 43. Typed by hand. From a JSON response.

That was the moment I stopped accepting the workflow and started building something better.

Business Central development carries a lot of invisible overhead, and none of it is the hard part. It's the boilerplate, the folder setup, the JSON-to-AL mapping, the constant Postman context switching. Mechanical work that consumes focus without earning it.

I spent six months building BC HERO: a free VS Code extension with seven tools that eliminate the most painful parts of the AL development workflow.

What's inside:

🗂️ Quick Project Setup — select your AL component folders, preview the structure, generate in one click. No more five-minute directory rituals.

🧱 AL Object Creator — all 16 AL object types, guided form, auto-calculated next available ID, batch queue. Generate everything in one pass.

⚡ JSON → AL Generator — drop a JSON file (plain objects, arrays, OData { "value": [...] } all work). BC HERO infers AL types, lets you customise, outputs syntax-highlighted AL. 30 fields in about 3 minutes instead of 25.

🔌 API Explorer — full HTTP client inside VS Code. Scans your workspace for API pages and queries. Basic Auth and OAuth 2.0. I haven't opened Postman for a BC project since I built this.

🌍 Translation Assistant — visual XLIFF editor with progress bars, inline editing, validation, and batch updates. A 200-unit review cycle went from over an hour to under 20 minutes.

📊 Schema Viewer — interactive force-directed graph of your table relationships with field metadata sidebar. First thing I open in an unfamiliar codebase.

🔗 Dependency Graph — visualization of every object in your workspace, color-coded by type, with directed dependency edges.
It's free and always will be.

Full story and design rationale on my blog 👉 blog link

VS Code Marketplace 👉 https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=yahyatouil.bc-hero

GitHub (issues, roadmap) 👉 https://github.com/yahyatouil-dev/bc-hero-info

DEV Community: Yahya Touil

How I used the Strategy pattern in AL to build a maintainable Business Central extension

I built 7 VS Code tools for Business Central developers because the workflow pain was real