DaxGuy

My friend Antonio Gilabert Plaza started his new Dynamics AX site. This site is entirely in Spanish. Do drop in. Another site added to the growing DAX community 🙂

Happy DAX-ing

Recently I was working on a POC which required me to insert 1,00,000 records into AX 2009 from an external LOB application and post these lines in AX. Well that got me thinking since it was a huge amount of import. .NET BC would be very slow, excel import would not be feasible. Direct SQL inserts seemed to be the feasible solution but I had to deal with RecId, RecVersionId & Company. Well after much R&D I hit upon using SSIS and some custom scripts to get the data inside AX. My test environment was:

Environment: WIN 2008 Enterprise 32 Bit, 4 GB RAM, MSSQL 2008 Developer SP1, AX 2009 SP1.

Test Dataset: 1,00,000 records into a table in a separate database in SQL 2008.

Objective: Insert these records in AX 2009.

Results: Inserted 1,00,000 records inside AX 2009 in 13.6 seconds (along with RecId, RecVersionId & DataAreaId). Used SSIS to bulk insert the records.

So how I went forward??

1. Created a sample database & sample table and populated with demo data.

The script for sample table create is as follows.

USE [Database]

GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON

GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON

GO
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tbl_PortalTrans]( [TransactionId] [nvarchar](20) NOT NULL, [TransactionReference] [nvarchar](30) NULL, [TransactionAmount] [numeric](28, 13) NULL) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

The script for sample data in the above table is as follows.

declare @counter int

set @counter = 0

while @counter <>

begin

set @counter = @counter + 1

insert into tbl_PortalTrans values (‘TRID-‘+cast(@counter as char),’Transaction Ref : ‘ + cast(@counter as char),

1000)

end

2. Created a sample target table & form in AX 2009.

This would be the ultimate target of these 1,00,000 records from the source table. The source xpo is attached in the download url.

3. Created a sample target table & form in AX 2009.

This was the meat of the application. I creates a SSIS package which reads the source tables, uses a few transformations to add extra columns to the data, use the custom script to generate the recid’s on the fly and finally push it inside AX 2009. I have also uploaded the VS 2008 SSIS package.

SSIS Control Flow objects.

SSIS Data Flow objects.

I’m also attaching a video on how this works 🙂

The source files are present below at Sky drive. In case you want to use the package, you need to have a good understanding about SSIS 2008 in order to modify the package. To use it, please modify the package. The upload also contains the AX 2009 XPO files and scripts for creating the Source Table & demo data. The files also contain a detailed video.

Happy DAX-ing 🙂

This is one book I wish was published a few years back when I was learning Dynamics AX. During that time there was a real crisis for AX related literature that I had to learn everything the hard way and it would have been really good had I got this book then :). This book is the first one of its class in the Dynamics AX Technology Books family and is a must read resources for new or experienced developers.
Mindaugas has done a really good job of compiling technical ‘how to’s’ in this book. It has 6 chapters and each chapter focusses on how to do simple things in X++. What I like most it apart from just X++ codes, it also explains how it works and some sections on ‘There’s more’. The book covers the following chapters:
Chapter 1: Processing Data
Chapter 2: Working with Forms
Chapter 3: Working with Data in Forms
Chapter 4: Building Lookups
Chapter 5: Processing Business Tasks
Chapter 6: Integration with Microsoft Office
My favourite is Chapter # 5 which explains and demonstrates the Ledger, Purch & Sales API’s which helps a developer to integrate with base AX. This is one area where I have seen developers struggle and this chapter does a good job of demonstrating the intricacies.
You can also view a Free Chapter here.
Code Download for the book is available here.
Click on the image below to go to Packt Site.

This is a really super(); book and I recommend it for new developers and also for advanced developers as a ready reference guide. I hope in the next release of this book (AX 6) additional topics like .NET integration, Reald world X Platform integration , AIF samples are also covered. Great work Mindaugas.

A new presentation has been released which can be used when meeting with customers and prospects who need to explore the Business Intelligence capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009.

I had been super() busy since the last few weeks so i was unable to do some serious blogging. I however got time last week and read through the new AX book ‘Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Programming: Getting Started‘ by ‘Erlend Dalen’ and post my feedback.

Chapter # 9 (Creating a New Module) is also good for developers who want to create a new module in AX , just like the other AX standard modules and it walks the developer through number sequences, parameters, security aspects.

Chapter # 11 (Web Services) however deals with the old version of creating a web service (.asmx). In AX 2009 this framework has significantly changed to use WCF. You may want to refer to the latest AX 2009 SDK for AX 2009 AIF & WCF concepts. “

Overall this is a very nice book for new developers. Its definitely worth reading this book. Kudos Erlend.

Lately there has been a lot of activity related to cloud computing with introduction of Windows AZURE. It truly is an interesting technology providing businesses wider opportunities. Well I decided to explore AZURE a bit and did a small POC on AX integration with AZURE. Well I hit on many roadblocks but was able to overcome them. In my POC I have created a simple WCF service on AZURE Platform and I’m calling that service from AX. The steps are as follows:

Another book on Microsoft Dynamics AX ‘Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009: Getting Started‘ has been released. Its good to see more and more books on Dynamics AX. This is the second book after ‘Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009’. Presently I’m reviewing this book and will publish a review soon. The book is available from Packtub Publishing. Click on the image below to visit the site (Available in .pdf and Hard Copy).

The latest version of Sure Step 2010 is now available from Partnersource. Click on the image below to download.