- Feature
- Build extensible and data-driven AL test suites
- Availability
- Generally available (October 2026)
- Industry focus
- Pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturing
In pharmaceutical manufacturing, software that touches batch records, quality status or release decisions has to be validated. That makes automated testing of custom Business Central code more than good practice. It's evidence. Business Central 29.0 makes those tests easier to write, maintain and report on.
The industry challenge
Pharmaceutical and nutraceutical manufacturers often extend Business Central for:
- Batch and lot status rules (quarantine, released, rejected)
- Expiry and retest date calculations
- Quality order and sampling logic
- Label and certificate of analysis output
Each rule needs testing against many cases. Expiry logic, for example, must handle different shelf lives, retest periods, unit conversions and edge dates. Until now, AL developers often wrote a separate test procedure for each case, copying the same setup, clean-up and logging code every time.
The result was large test suites that were slow to extend and hard to read. When a validation auditor asked "how is this rule tested?", the answer was buried in repetitive code.
What Microsoft delivered in Business Central 29.0
Business Central 29.0 adds two capabilities to AL testing. According to Microsoft:
- Parameterized tests from reusable data sources. One test procedure can run against many sets of input data, instead of being copied for each case.
- Lifecycle handlers. Developers can attach shared behaviour for setup, clean-up, logging, measurement and test reporting, instead of repeating it in every test.
Microsoft says this makes test suites easier to maintain because test data and lifecycle behaviour are kept apart from the individual test procedures. Data-driven tests cut duplicated code. Handlers give a consistent way to add logging, clean-up, performance measurement and custom reporting across many test codeunits.
Where the value shows up
| Business area | Impact for a pharmaceutical manufacturer |
|---|---|
| Validation evidence | Test cases read like a table of scenarios and expected results |
| Coverage | Adding a case means adding data, not writing a new test |
| Consistency | Shared logging and reporting across all test codeunits |
| Change control | Faster regression testing when rules or Business Central versions change |
| Development cost | Less duplicated code to maintain |
The link to validation is direct. Regulators care that critical rules are tested against the right cases and that results are recorded consistently. Data-driven tests make both easier to show.
A worked scenario
Consider a contract manufacturer of vitamin supplements (an illustrative example). Its Business Central extension calculates expiry dates and sets lot status based on stability data and customer-specific shelf-life requirements.
Before 29.0, the extension had 40 separate expiry tests, each with its own setup code. Adding a new customer requirement meant copying and editing several tests, and the quality team found the results hard to review.
With Business Central 29.0, the developer rewrites the expiry tests as one parameterized test fed by a data source of scenarios: product, manufacturing date, shelf life, retest rule and expected outcome. A shared lifecycle handler logs every run in a consistent format. When a new customer requirement arrives, the team adds rows of test data. The quality assurance lead reviews the scenarios as a list rather than as code.
Adoption considerations
- Start with rule-heavy logic. Expiry, pricing, status and calculation rules benefit most from data-driven tests.
- Let quality help write the data. Business experts can define the scenarios and expected results, and developers can turn them into data sources.
- Standardize logging early. Use lifecycle handlers to produce the same evidence format for every test.
- Link tests to requirements. Reference requirement IDs in test data to support traceability.
- Combine it with CI/CD. Running these tests automatically on every build multiplies the benefit.
The bottom line
For pharmaceutical manufacturers, untested custom code is a compliance risk as well as a technical one. Data-driven AL tests in Business Central 29.0 make it practical to cover more scenarios with less code. They also produce evidence that quality teams and auditors can actually read. It's a developer feature with a direct effect on validation effort.
If you run validated processes on Business Central, it's worth reviewing your test strategy with an experienced adviser as part of your 29.0 upgrade.
Source: Microsoft roadmap 573333