Extending Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations Cookbook

Using Enums for comparison and status

It is very common to use an Enum to define the status of a record, and we will cover state machines in Chapter 15, State Machines. When defining an Enum for status, we will order the elements so that we can compare them in code.

In the case of the SalesStatus Enum, the elements are as follows:

Symbol	Value
None	0
Backorder	1
Delivered	2
Invoiced	3
Canceled	4

This way, we can select all sales orders, which are not yet invoiced, using the following code lines:

select SalesId, SalesName     from salesTable     where salesTable.SalesStatus < SalesStatus::Invoiced 

Sometimes, we will need to reverse the order. In the case of the InvenTrans table, there are two status fields: ...