AX 2012 - Design Patterns Overview

With the release of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, there is a lot of wonderful new offerings that has come along with this release. One of the area's of major focus, that should be understood, by all technical personnel is around design patterns.

I wanted to take the time, to kick off this series of post, about design patterns, and review what resources we have from Microsoft, on these topics. Then I would like to dive into examples for each of the design patterns, talk pro's and con's, and finally value that each can add to a given implementation of AX.

Some design patterns will have deeper running affects, than others, however all are equally important to understand. To kick this off properly then, lets review the design patterns I will be covering in this series of post. First off, we have the official home on MSDN for AX 2012 Design Patterns: Microsoft Dynamics AX Design Patterns [AX 2012]

From there, we have the following list of design patterns, that need to be understood when considering techniques and approaches for technical solutions and designs.:

• Instantiating Application Objects Design Pattern


• Searching for Records Design Pattern


• static find Method Design Pattern


• static exist Method Design Pattern


• Parameter System Design Pattern


• Multiselection Design Pattern


• Searching for Multiple Occurrences Design Pattern


• Change Company Design Pattern


• Partner Hooks Design Pattern


• Pack-Unpack Design Pattern


• Use the Type System Design Pattern


• Storno Design Pattern


• Persistent Data Storage Design Pattern


• Data Validation Design Pattern

With the above list, I plan on diving into each of these design patterns, referencing back to this post and each of the official homes on MSDN for each topic. Some of these design patterns I have already touched on, like the un-pack and pack, etc.

I can't stress enough the importance of understanding each of these design patterns, and why I plan on spending weeks, covering these in several, several post. Some are easy and straight forward, therefore I will combine a few design patterns per post. What I hope to get to, as I mentioned above, is to talk about the design pattern, some real world example code in how it's applied, some pro's and con's and then value.

Just looking into some of these, you can see Microsoft is trying to implement software designs that have worked well in other places, as well as some of these patterns continue us down the path of abstraction away from being so close to the source, when we do modifications.

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

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