Spotlight: AX 2012 POS Development - Application Triggers

Well I hope everyone has had a great weekend and your looking forward to another Dynamics AX filled week. There is so much to cover about this powerful release of Microsoft Dynamics AX, with AX 2012. I'm really looking forward to our continued path down creating a BI story with AX 2012. Further, I'm equally as excited to have started the EP focused development post. There we will be targeting a warranty management solution, built 100% for EP.

With that said, and going back to the fact that we have so many wonderful topics to touch on with AX 2012 - I wanted to do a blog spotlight. It's been a little while since I have done such a post, and I wanted to take the time and highlight what Eduardo Arias, of AXWonders.blogspot.com recently posted about.



Ed, post recently on a great topic, being that of POS Development for AX 2012. From the post.:
"Application Triggers are called before and after certain operations when the Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 POS application is running. This is the first assembly that AX 2012 POS looks at when starting.

In addition, you can override the default Application Triggers’ operations by using the IApplicationTrigger interface provided by the Microsoft.Dynamics.Retail.Pos.Contracts.Triggers namespace in Visual Studio 2010."

Ed takes us through, in his first on a series about Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 POS Development, and dives into the topic of Application Triggers. In this Ed takes us the design, interfaces & steps - so that we can gain a very solid knowledge base around AX 2012 POS and Application Triggers.

Further, as we read along we are giving insight into the process, where to find examples, as well as a look to the next in this series of post. That being a focus around the topic of Blank Operations for AX 2012 POS Development. All-in-all it was a great start to a very interesting subject. I think it's a very timely entry into the blogsphere, and as Ed points out - there is not a lot of coverage for this topic yet. With that, many thanks Ed for adding to the community, and please keep it coming!

Till Next Time!
Follow Me @:
    

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

AX 2012 - Performance and IL - invokeStaticMethodIL

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, a huge focus has been around the move for X++ code to be compiled to IL, as well as creating C# code to achieve development needs, when possible.

Recently, I started talking about Performance in AX 2012, and how this goes beyond the database layer. It's still true, that the majority of performance is around the SQL Server, and specifically the disk I/O Sub-system speed.

However, with that said, there are some great improvements throughout the layers that make up AX 2012. Something recent that I highlighted was around Scale out of SSRS as well as Services.

Keeping with this theme, and to highlight some other area's of performance improvements, lets move towards the code side of things. To help set the stage, lets reference a Microsoft resource: Compile into .NET Framework CIL [AX 2012].

"The Compile into .NET Framework CIL task converts your compiled application code into Common Intermediate Language (CIL) code that can be consumed by the Microsoft .NET Framework."

With this, there are certain area's of AX that always compile down to IL / MSIL / CIL. All of those are in reference to the .Net Framework execution. This means, that the same C# code that actually executes, is compiled down to IL. The same now, takes place for some area's of X++. There are huge benefits in code execution when this is the case, and why this is such an important topic to understand from a performance point of view.

Keeping this in mind, there are sometimes when X++ code does not execute as CIL. Wouldn't it be neat, if there was a way to execute code as IL, X++ code that's not compiled down to IL? There is a way!

Enter: SysDictClass::invokeStaticMethodIL() "Runs the specified method and makes sure that the method is executed under X++ IL."

Now there are some remarks, that need to be understood from the above reference.: "This method demands the XppILExecutePermission class and asserts both the RunAsPermission class and the ExecutePermission class. The invocation will transition to X++ IL by using the RunAs function if it is running as interpreted. If it is already running as X++ IL, the method is invoked directly.

As there may be some overhead, this method should only be used on computationally-extensive methods.

This method will not transition to IL if the current TTS level is larger than zero (unless forced) because the transaction scope does not flow across IL boundaries."

With this in hand now, we have a way to help possibly boost performance, and execute static methods, and therefore area's of code that could benefit from running in the IL, or chunks of Business Logic that can be statically invoked or kicked off. This is a nice little gem of knowledge to keep handy, when your facing down performance issues, and really need to squeeze all the resource juice you can out of a process.

Well that's all for now, but check back soon as a whole lot more to come. Till next time!

"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

AX 2012 Services, Services & Services - Recap Post

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, I and a few other community bloggers have been really talking up services. This started with a dive into services and from there has grew and grew.

To this end, I thought it would be a good time, to take and do a wrap up article, if you will, that ties together all these efforts that have been going on, to take and give a single point of entry for finding out about all things services. There is actually a lot more, in-depth coverage that needs, and will take place for this topic. However, for your ease, and enjoyment, the following is a list of post & articles that have been created to date.

First, a nice introduction into services.: A Dive into services.

Next up, we have the set of post I did, covering different concepts and ideas of services, that was built from the dive post.:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - A Dive into System Services, Metadata Service
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - A Dive into Document Services
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - A Dive into Services, Custom Services (Part I)
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - A Dive into Services, Custom Services (Part II)
• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 - A Dive into Services, Consuming Document Services
• AX 2012, PowerPivot and a Dash of OData Feeds

Now in some of my posting, I did write about the SysOperations Framework, or Business Operations Framework as the actual official product label for that said framework is stated. I had planned on doing the same kind of intro post around this framework as well, as it relates to services.

However, in the midst of all the writing, learning, and sharing some other great community bloggers have covered this to a good extent already, and so I will link to those resources here.

SysOperations from Fellow Bloggers:
-AX2012: SysOperation part 1: Data Contracts and Service Operations
-AX2012: SysOperation part 2: SysOperationServiceController
-AX2012: SysOperation part 3: SysOperationAutomaticUIBuilder

And
-From RunBase to SysOperation : Business Operation Framework
-From RunBase to SysOperation : Business Operation Framework (Cont'd)

With all of this, it should be looked, really as a nice introduction to the concepts, and abilities of AX 2012, for making use of SOA, or services for internal and external use. This will only continue to grow, so it's ever so important that these concepts be understood now, and implemented in today's AX 2012 projects.

Look for more depth, and deeper dives into some of these concepts in the weeks to follow. That's all for now however, for those of you in the U.S. enjoy your long weekend! Till next time!




"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"

Microsoft Dynamics ERP Online - and other conv11 news

Well we are into full swing with day two at conv11the key note had some great details in it, and as expected, Dynamics Cloud ERP, as well as AX 2012 where the majority of the focus. Along with BI, specifically showing off Microsoft Project Crescent, which is the next version, or next generation of report builder.

As part of the keynote, and as the title suggests, Microsoft today announced Microsoft Dynamics ERP Online.. This has been a building up for years, and if you have been reading my blog for any extended amount of time, you will have seen I have been talking about the cloud and it's impact on Dynamics, specifically Dynamics AX for a while. Over four years now!

Well with conv11 Microsoft now has an official stance on cloud computing, for Dynamics ERP. In looking at this, and as I covered in my session on cloud computing for AX, as part of AXUG dayone session, IaaS clouding offering, with AX installed on it is what the cloud story for Dynamics AX is today.

This is done either via Partner Hosting, and a new type of license that is based on per user, per month, or through a typical purchase of an AX license, with the customer making the choice to deploy AX to an IaaS cloud offering from the likes of an Amazon or even with Microsoft Azure VM role.

This cloud story continues to unfold however, as it was stated today, the next release of AX, version 7, will be developed to run on Azure First!

From early readings of the tea leaves, it would seem as though this would be around the 2014 calendar year time frame. That would fit into the product lifecycle we have seen so far with the AX product line.

There are so many great sessions now that the day into full swing, and I will be taking time put sit down today and talk with Kees H. and Lachlan C., both from Microsoft, and both I have interviewed on this blog before. So look for those interviews coming soon, as well as a slew of AX 2012, detailed articles and post, as today is Puboic Beta of AX 2012!



"Visit the Dynamics AX Community Page today!"