Decisions Fall 2010 - AX Day is live and kicking!

Well the Decisions Fall 2010 - AX Day is live and kicking! I just went over to the VC (Virtual Conference), and checked out the lounge area. I like how this is growing as a conference. Even the lounge area's are more niche / focused. However you still have the General Lounge as well.

For that don't know, the twitter hash tag for this conference is.: #msdwdecisions

Little long hash tag, but that's hte offical one from MSDW. I recommend checking things out. of course Sunrise Technologies, Inc., the great Microsoft VAR I am a part of is there, waiting to talk with you at the Sunrise booth! Make sure to tell them I sent you!

Finally, check out all the great sessions, including Robert Boone's Batch Framework session. You can see the session highlight I did, here, last week.: Session Highlight post

I love these kind of conferences, because you can attend right from your desk, Free!

There should be some great coverage that comes out of this event. I myself will be doing some coverage, mostly after the fact. Check back soon, as we enter the last part of 2010! So much to cover and talk about over the next several months. Hope everyone is settled and done with the Halloween Candy... it's AX DAY!

Till next time!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

A Focus on Performance with Robert Boone

On Monday I did a highlight of the upcoming Decisions Fall 2010 - AX Day, Virtual conference. You can find that post here.: Decisions 2010 - Next week!

As part of that highlight, I did a spotlight on sessions including one by one of my peers at Sunrise, Robert Boone.

In order to build into that upcoming session, Robert wanted to spend a little time on some performance tips around Dynamics AX, and with that below is his first guest article on this blog.:

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Dynamics AX Performance Quick Tips - Robert Boone

There is a good bit of information out on the blogsphere, MSDN, and other sources. A lot of this in contained within whitepapers, about Dynamics AX performance. For me however, when I am dealing with Performance and Dynamics AX, the following is my top three list of resources and tools for resolving performance issues.:

1. Pre-Implementation Planning Stage - Database Hardware

Dynamics AX is a great fit for a wide variety of businesses. For many, the hardware requirements may be very relatively minimal. But for larger implementations, those with many users or very intensive processing requirements, do not skimp on database hardware. Larger implementations especially need to plan for enough dedicated disks to follow the recommendations of the Performance Team listed at the bottom of the following checklist. Checklist link.

Final note on this, it is almost always much less expensive to get adequate hardware than to expend effort later on extensive optimization.

2.) During Implementation - Test - Use SQL Server DMVs

Make sure you've got representative data well before go-live and test. This is key to what DMV's can tell to a build up to production go live, and post go live performance expectations.

Know what's happening in the database. Know what your longest running queries are. Do they have reasonable query plans? Any missing indexes? What kind of wait states do you have? These are relatively easy things to see with SQL DMVs.

This is also a great top 10 list for Dynamics AX/SQL performance: SQLCat.com Top Ten Tips.

3.) To Quickly Identify Issues, use the Dynamics AX Trace Parser!

First a big thanks to the Performance Team for releasing this! Trace Parser is invaluable if you need to look at some Dynamics AX process to find out exactly where it is spending time. All of the above database tools, skills, and processes should be in place. With the combination of those and Trace Parser you should be able to identify and resolve any issues that do come up.

On Trace Parser, a couple of tips: Use this on a system that's not busy. Ideally, when tracing you'll be the only one in that instance. This is probably obvious to anyone who has used Dynamics AX tracing, but trace for them minimum amount of time necessary to capture the problem as trace files can quickly become huge.

Finally, I will be leading a session, as Brandon as highlighted on Batch Framework in Dynamics AX 2009, for the Decisions Fall Virtual Conference next Monday. What's important to understand, is that if you hit processes that nothing else seems to work, maybe it's time to look at worker processes or multi-threading a process. This is best suited for the session I will be leading, on the Batch Framework in AX 2009! (Link to session information)

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I would like to thank Robert for taking the time to do this guest post, and look forward to many more as we approach AX 6, and beyond!

Make sure to check out Roberts session, and get deep insight into what all the Batch Framework can help you do within Dynamics AX 2009!

Till Next time!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

Decisions 2010 - Next week!

Well, now that AXUG Summit is over, as well as Convergence EMEA is wrapping up - its time to look to Nov 1st and Decisions 2010 - Dynamics AX - virtual conference by MSDynamicsWorld.com

This has become a great event, and one of the best things is you can attend right from your desktop. No need to fly, leave. You can develop, or work your job for a couple of hours, then attend specific sessions, and chat with others focused in the Dyanmics AX Ecosystem.

Sunrise Technologies, Inc. is a sponsor once again, and is also well represent by Robert Boone, Senior Technical Architect.



Robert is a peer of my at Sunrise, and also a counted Alabama football fan, here is a little bio about Robert.:
"Robert Boone is a Senior Technical Architect with Sunrise Technologies focused on Microsoft Dynamics AX. Robert has over 15 years of IT experience in Supply Chain Management (SCM), Business Intelligence Systems (BI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and transactional systems. He has hands-on implementation and customization experience in Software Development, Database Design, and SQL Server. His extensive experience in programming, systems analysis, systems design, and configuration, allows him to interact with people from various business areas and levels. Robert has successfully lead the technical implementation aspects of several Microsoft Dynamics AX implementations."

He will be focusing on deliverying a great session, titled: Microsoft Dynamics AX Batch Processing Deep Dive. (Session Link)

I think this is most likely the least understood technical area with Dynamics AX 2009. This is not just about batch processing in AX 2009, but what all the Batch Processing Framework has to offer. Think worker processes and thread safe processes.

There are also some other big names that will be speaking at Decisions 2010 - AX:

• Dr. Scott Hamilton - Consultant and Author - Session: Managing Process Manufacturing Using AX


• Guy Weismantel, Microsoft, Global Marketing Director, Microsoft Dynamics ERP - Session: Microsoft Dynamics ERP: The Case for Application Overhaul


• Mike Ehrenberg, Microsoft, Dynamics Distinguished Engineer - Session: Microsoft Dynamics: The right choice for today and tomorrow

There are actually some other great sessions, and it's going to be hard to attend them all. To see a full list, you can check them out here.: Decisions Fall 2010 - Speakers

This is really a great event, and a great way to wrap up / extend what was covered in AXUG Summit as well as Convergence EMEA 2010. This is also just two months before the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2011 Technical Conference, in which a lot more information about AX 6 will become public.

That's all for now, check out Decisions 2010 and get registered, as well as Roberts Session. Till next time!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

Dynamics AX - Thread Development vs. Batch runtime task

Recently, in the past months, I talked about in a few post using Threads in your X++ code, to help with adding parrellel processing to long running processes.

Dynamics AX 2009 - X++ Thread Development
Dynamics AX Threads - More details

There is for sure, a specific time and place to use Threads, however what about in Batch? What if I want to take the work I am doing with threads, and actually run that now in a batch processing mode?

Bottom line.: It will not work!

Threads, currently, can't be spawned from within a batch executing task. The design behind batch framework is geared around taking and using the BatchHeader class, and the runtime task framework, to create batch task.

If you do this, you will see these task execute under the same context as threads, being that of a "worker" user type.

So as I said, Thread development has it's time and place, and that does not include Batch related execution. Threads are best for user processes, where the process always involves a user kicking off that said process. If batch based execution is needed, then taking the example of found in the Journal Batch Processing whitepaper, you can take and allow for parrellel execution of code, with batch task being created, vs. threads being spawned.

There are other good examples of this actually, including the Inside Dynamics AX 2009 book, which covers this topic as well.

So with this, we have two ways to achieve parrellel processing, and depending on the desired nature of the process, will drive you to which method. To batch, or not to batch? For this, that is the driving question!

That's all for now, but check back soon, as more to come!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"