With Business Central 2025 wave 1, Microsoft will be able to delete obsolete tables and fields from their own apps.
Publishers on AppSource are facing the same issues as Microsoft: our products evolve, our products are sometimes redesigned.
We need at some point to break things (= deleting tables and fields).
My thought is that we are conscious of the consequences of deleting customer data and we are already following the obsoletion pattern.
If a table or field is deleted, and Microsoft want to ensure we are not doing this too quickly, the apps could be compared to a version published X months ago and ensure this table/field is already ObsoleteState = Removed at that time.
Comments
Since Microsoft has found a way to clean up standard Business Central apps, the next logical step would be to allow third parties to do the same—ideally, at the same time during the Step version update. Currently, many tables, schemas, and even some Enums are awaiting removal. For example, if an Enum is used in a field, the field cannot be removed, which in turn prevents the removal of the Enum.
Category: Development
I fully agree with this post. Over time, table and field ranges will fill up with Removed tables and fields, which not only adds needless baggage to the app, but also make the app less maintainable. Microsoft has already conceded that point, and they are planning a cleanup in BC26 (2025 RW1).There will need to be some rules for this, as there are for existent breaking changes. You will need to have published at least X version(s) with the removed field/table in order to give extending apps time to update their data.
Category: Development
I'd also like to point out this older idea, which seems to address the same issue, which already had around 180 votes at the time this new idea was registered ideaid=e51e3cc1-98e0-eb11-ba5e-0003ff45cf45 (we can't include urls in comments).
Category: Development
Business Central Team (administrator)
Thank you for this suggestion! Currently this is not on our roadmap. We are tracking this idea and if it gathers more votes and comments we will consider it in the future. Best regards, Business Central Team