Kritical.Lens.ALDependencyMatrix

Second slice of the Kritical Lens™ family — a PowerShell 7 module that walks every .al file in a Business Central AL project and produces a dependency matrix: every external-table reference site grouped by table, with per-site file, line, and column, and (optionally) the mechanical fix-path when you supply a replacement-table mapping.

Made in Australia by Kritical Pty Ltd — a Seriously Kritical™ Production.

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What it is

Purpose-built for third-party-dependency rip-out programmes. When you want to remove a third-party AL dependency (a paid connector, a legacy integration layer) from your project, this cmdlet answers the questions that let you plan the work honestly:

• Which tables from the dependency are you actually still using?
• How many sites in your code reference each one?
• Which files hold those references?
• What's the mechanical fix at every site?

Install

Install-Module -Name Kritical.Lens.ALDependencyMatrix -Scope CurrentUser
Import-Module  Kritical.Lens.ALDependencyMatrix

Requires PowerShell 7 or later. No AL compiler required — the tool is pure regex-driven and cross-platform.

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Quick start

# Walk everything under the AL project
$r = Invoke-KriticalLensALDependencyMatrix -Root ./MyBcProject

$r.TotalSites        # total external-table reference sites in the code
$r.DistinctTables    # how many distinct external tables you touch
$r.ByTable           # per-table site count
$r.Rows              # every site — File, Line, Column, Table, Kind

Scope to a specific dependency:

# For example, MDC Nordic Pax8 Connector tables sit in the 72677xxx range
Invoke-KriticalLensALDependencyMatrix `
    -Root ./MyBcProject `
    -FilterTablePattern '^72677' `
    -OutputMd ./reports/mdc-nordic-deps.md `
    -OutputJson ./reports/mdc-nordic-deps.json

Enrich with replacement-table hints so the report also shows the mechanical fix at every site:

# ./mapping.json:
# {
#   "72677586": "Krit Pax8 Product Mirror",
#   "72677589": "Krit Pax8 Product Pricing Mirror"
# }
Invoke-KriticalLensALDependencyMatrix `
    -Root ./MyBcProject `
    -FilterTablePattern '^72677' `
    -MappingPath ./mapping.json `
    -OutputMd ./reports/rip-out-plan.md

The Markdown report emits one row per site with a FixPath column, which is exactly the plan you hand to the developer doing the rewrite.

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What it detects

The tool applies six regex patterns per line and emits one row per match:

Kind	Pattern (essence)	Example
RecordDecl	Record <name>	Item: Record "Item";
RecordRefOpen	.Open(Database::<name>)	RRef.Open(Database::"MDC Product");
DatabaseLiteral	Database::<name> (anywhere)	SetView('Database::72677586')
TableRelation	TableRelation = <name>.<field>	field property
SourceTable	SourceTable = <name>;	page / query / report
RunObject	RunObject = <type> <name>;	action property

Table identifiers are either numeric IDs, quoted names, or bare names. The tool normalises quoted names by stripping quotes.

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Design principles

• Zero dependencies beyond PowerShell 7. No Pester, no Microsoft.Dynamics.Nav.* modules, no AL compiler. Cross-platform.
• Regex-driven, not AST-driven. Missing a semicolon or having a broken .al file doesn't stop the walk. The tool sees what's there, not what compiles.
• Convention-driven output. Two formats: Markdown for humans, JSON for machines. Return object for pipelining.
• Rip-out ergonomics. -FilterTablePattern narrows to one dependency at a time. -MappingPath produces per-site fix suggestions. That's the whole rip-out worksheet.

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The Kritical Lens family

Kritical.Lens.ALDependencyMatrix is the second standalone Lens family slice. Individual Lens modules are extracted as standalone public repositories as each hits a real 1.0.0 quality bar. The umbrella lives at Sir-J-AU/Kritical.Lens.

Sibling slice: Sir-J-AU/Kritical.Lens.SchemaCompleteness — proves a Microsoft365DSC-compatible module set covers every schema resource, parameter, and AllowedValue.

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License and credits

MIT. Copyright © 2026 Kritical Pty Ltd. Author: Joshua Finley.

Built to feed the Kritical Business Central connector's V4 native-mode rip-out programme — the milestone that removes the MDC Nordic Pax8 Connector dependency and lets a small business stop paying that license.

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_{Kritical Pty Ltd  ·  ABN 39 687 048 086  ·  Geelong VIC, Australia
+61 1300 274 655  ·  sales@kritical.net  ·  kritical.net}