Freaky Tech Friday - The Killing Zone

Well Ghosts and Ghouls, it seems you dare to return for the last and final Freaky Tech Friday post of this years haunting season. It came from Another Platform, didn't drive you away. Entering The Abyss of Integration didn't drive you mad, and your survived Attack of the Zombie Processes. Now let us enter, The Killing Zone.



This tale, is one of great suspense, and danger, focused around the fact that if the new design patterns, thought processes and concepts that come as part of AX 2012 are not fully understood and used, you will not make it out of the Killing Zone alive. You will end up dead! Or at least at a dead end with your Dynamics AX, and it's ROI. This is an easy place to survive if your new the the Dynamics AX world, however for those of us that have been working with the product since it earlier days, to quote "The Times, they are a changing".

To this point, they have changed, with so many different things to understand. One hot topic I keep talking about is around Workflows in AX 2012, and how it should be used to model business processes. There are several other area's however, from how you integrat with AX, making use of the SysOperations Framework, vs. RunBasebatch, and even planning for the new delcrative engine that empowers the new option for configuration needs that a customer might have for it's products.



I've not spent much time on this topic yet, however the new configurator within AX 2012 is based on Microsoft Solver Foundation technology, which is a declarative based decision engine, vs. the current Product Builder, rules based engine. Not to get to deep on this specific topic, as it well deserves many, many post.

Some Area's that need special attention, if you are to avoid having your final resting place be within the killing zone, are.:

• XDS vs. RLS - Record Level Security still exists in AX 2012, and is meant to support upgrades. However any new scope, should not use RLS, but instead make use of the new Extensible Data Security Framework
• RunBaseBatch & RunBaseReport - Again, here we have these in place and still used by out-of-the-box scope from Microsoft. With that, any new development should use the SysOperations Framework, or Business Operations Framework. It is true that this framework ends up, specifically for Batch using the underlying batch classes. However those are clearly marked as legacy code and will be ripped out in the next version as replaced. This is why it's important to use the new Design Concept and not get trapped into old habbits.
• Avoid the .Net BC - This is important one to really understand and take advantage of. For any new scope the .Net BC Should not be used. Instead the focus should be around services development in AX 2012, for internal and external of AX consumption and usage.

There are a lot of other, specific's that can trap you into falling into the killing Zone, and killing your chances of maximizing your ROI, and getting some great new use cases that come as part of what is offered now in AX 2012.

There are cases, specifically related to upgrades from older to version of AX to AX 2012, that you have to use the older concepts. As the value is not there maybe to change a bunch of code, as part of the upgrade, just to use the new frameworks. However, before AX 7 takes shape for such cases, those area's will have to be addressed. Also, when upgrading is the focus, still keep in mind that anything new, or anything that must change, should change and use the new concepts, vs. the older ones.

Well Ghosts and Ghouls, take heed to these warnings, and avoid having the killing zone be your final resting place. That's all the haunting post for this season of terror, stay safe and if you dare return, we shall be waiting here, ready to scare you next year.

Tell next time!

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