Freaky Tech Friday - It came from another Platform

With it being October, one of my favorite times of the year, I thought it would be nice to have a fun, but informative series of post title: Freaky Tech Friday. This series of post, will be about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, and how other technologies, from other platforms, other planets, and other dimensions can be used. Maybe not so much other planets or dimensions, but you get the idea.

With that, lets start this creepy stroll down the dark alley of interopability that exists with AX 2012. The once scary path, that was filled with gotcha gremlins, and barrier trolls, now has become not such a scray place. What I'm talking about here, is not the net.tcp consumption of Services hosted within the AOS itself, but extending this, so that other platforms can consume these services through hosting end points through IIS.



From the above system architecture we would be focusing our efforts on the hosted WCF services within IIS. These services are really pointers, to the same X++ based artifacts that live within an instance of AX. This is how advanced end points can be enabled, that, say would allow Java based software, python, Objective-C, and other possible technologies that come from other platforms could consume directly these services, or at least be enabled to do so.

To help us getting started down this dark path, of creating a solution-stien architecture, we need our first lesson to be focused on how to enable the hosting of Services within IIS for AX 2012. To start, we need to read and understand the following.: Install web services on IIS [AX 2012]

"Web services on IIS is an optional component. The Application Object Server (AOS) is the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service host for Microsoft Dynamics AX services. The AOS-hosted services are available to users and applications across the Intranet. To consume services over the Internet, you must host services on Internet Information Services (IIS). Skip this procedure if you do not need to expose the Microsoft Dynamics AX services over the Internet."

Now I want to be clear, that for non-Microsoft platform technologies, even within the intranet, consumption of the WCF services will need to most likely take place via hosting the services on IIS. This is related to the use of AOS hosted services being offered up via net.tcp bindings. Understanding this fact, will help you in enabling this other worldy technologies from another platform, communicate and work with AX 2012 services.

Following the above referenced TechNet article through, we can see how to setup our services, so they can be consumed by internet external consumers, as well as other technologies that need more enhanced integration port bindings.

Well I think thats enough to scare almost anyone, on this Freaky Tech Friday post. Tune in next week ghosts and ghouls, as we take this further, and go past the point of no return, into the abyss of integration! Scare you then!

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