AX2012 R2 CU7 released - Summary of few technical enhancements

Microsoft  announced the release of Cumulative Update (CU) 7 for Microsoft Dynamics AX2012 R2 on 1st Nov 2013.The update can be downloaded from here. 

While we are waiting for complete details to be out on partnersouce, we can still find out many good details on technet. The what's new link for modules, features and country specific regions on technet is here.

Below are some major technical enhancements I came across on digging technet:

• AxBuild.exe utility program to accomplish a full X++ compile to p-code on AOS. This is much faster then the client compile. This utility start several temporary instances of the AOS and tells each AOS which piece of X++ compile to accomplish. It then consolidates results from each AOS and reports them to log files.  According to Microsoft tests this is 13 times faster than the normal client compile. Isn't this cool. It is good to see new tool to save time for partners/customers in the most time consuming technical maintenance activity. More details can be found on technet article here 

• Backup and Recovery : With the release of CU7, Microsoft Dynamics AX2012 R2 now includes a Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) writer which integrates with windows VSS framework. This will be an interesting area to explore. More technical details can be found here.

• Data export/import framework is now shipped as a part of standard Microsoft Dynamics AX instead as an add-on. A whole new set of entities are added to the portfolio. 

• Office add ins improved performance and new feature which can be found here

• Reporting : Cool new features to enhance working experience like new methods to set advance printer properties, power shell command to integrate multiple report server instances, new classes to improve performance on report server. More details can be found here

There is a whole new set of things to explore in Microsoft Dynamics AX, keep exploring and keep sharing.

Be careful in while using menuFunction class to run a menu Item using X++ code

Hi Friends,
Many times while developing/customizing processes in Microsoft Dynamics AX, we are required to call forms through X++ code. Sometimes people use MenuFunction class and sometimes ClassFactory.

In case you use menu function class then be careful as recently I faced a situation where system was crashing at menuFunction.run() call. In this situation we found classFactory() to be working fine. This situation arised when AOS and Client were on different machines.

I will explain the scenario and reasons now with the below example:

• Create a new class and a static function which always runs on a client. Inside this function we are creating an instance of MenuFunction class to run the display menu item "CustGroup"

• Call this function from a job as shown below you will notice that form will open:

• Change the function declaration to run it on server as shown below

• Now let's use classFactory to run the form and again change the function declaration to run the function on client

• Run the job and the form opens up.

• Now change the function definition to run the function on server.

• Run the job and the form opens up.

Reason I found is that classFactory is having run on property as "Called from" so it can be initialized either from client or from server. However in standard AX most menu items have run on property set as "Client". See below the display menu item custGroup properties:

 So if you try to instantiate menuFunction class from a code running on server to run a menu item which runs on client then your system will stop responding and ultimately crash, however classFactory runs fine in both the situations.

To summarize the scenario:

• AOS and client are on different machines which is mostly a real time situation.
• The called menu item has run on property set as client (Most standard AX display menu items are set this way)
• The menu function was instantiated from code running on server side. 
• In case menu function is instantiated from a code running on client, then it works fine.

I would suggest to prefer using classFactory rather than menuFunction class to call a form as it works always :). However please consider security implications of using classFactory.

P.S -> For testing the above scenario make sure AOS and Client are on different machines. If everything is installed in one box then this scenario can't be replicated.

Thanks for reading the blog.

Cheers!!!

AX2012 : Post costs for a project using X++ code

In this post I would like to share X++ code to post costs for a project without any user intervention. Normally post cost  is a three step process, but before running this process you should have proper data setup in the system and have some transactions against the project:

Step 1: User open post cost screen from project form



Step 2: Click on select button the following selection criterion screen opens up

Step 3 - Post: User fills the selection criterion and click OK, system generates some records based on this selection and those records are shown in the post cost screen as shown below and then user posts the cost and these can be seen in posted transactions of the project.

 

In this process technically system populates some temporary table buffers based on the user selection criterion and then posts the costs based on the temporary tables populated in step 2. It is important to know the classes and there hierarchy involved in this process.

Hierarchy of classes used to build the temporary table buffers for posting the cost based on user criterion are shown below:

Hierarchy of classes used to post the cost is shown below

 

The three steps shown above can be automated using the below X++ code job:

 

Let me show you how the code relates to the actual steps:

The selection criterion in step 2 goes here:
You can create a setup to run the code on any setting. For illustration I have used Balance in the job.

The Query criterion in step 2 again goes here


 

The assignment of temporary table buffer to post the cost goes as shown below:

Trigger of post function goes here:




For those who quickly want to reuse the code, here it is:

  Args                                args;
  ProjPeriodPostingSelectCost_Proj    projPeriod;
  ProjId                              projId = strFmt("%1*",'JOB001159'); //Your project Number
  ProjPeriodPostingLedger             projPeriodPosting;

  args = new Args();
  args.parmEnumType(enumNum(ProjCostSales));
  args.parmEnum(ProjCostSales::Cost);
  projPeriod  = ProjPeriodPostingSelect::newProj(args,projId);
  projPeriod.setQueryRange();
  projPeriod.initQuery();
  projPeriod.parmProjLedgerStatus(ProjGroup::periodic2ledgerStatus(ProjLedgerStatusPeriodic::BalanceSheet));
  projPeriod.parmTransActionDate(systemDateGet());
  projPeriod.parmQueryCost(NoYes::Yes);
  projPeriod.parmQueryEmpl(NoYes::Yes);
  projPeriod.parmQueryItem(NoYes::Yes);
  projPeriod.parmProjTimeMaterial(NoYes::Yes);
  projPeriod.parmProjInternal(NoYes::Yes);
  projPeriod.createTrans();

  //Posting the cost

  projPeriodPosting  = ProjPeriodPostingLedger::construct(args);
  projPeriodPosting.getLast();
  projPeriodPosting.parmProjLedgerStatus(ProjLedgerStatus::BalanceSheet);
  projPeriodPosting.parmtransActionDate(systemDateGet());
  projPeriodPosting.parmAcknowledgementDate(systemDateGet());
  projPeriodPosting.parmTmpProjPeriodic(projPeriod.tmpProjPeriodic());
  projPeriodPosting.parmTmpProjPeriodicCost(projPeriod.tmpProjPeriodicCost());
  projPeriodPosting.parmTmpProjPeriodicSale(projPeriod.tmpProjPeriodicSale());
  projPeriodPosting.run();

Next section is for those interested in deep diving into the job:

U might notice that I have declared object of ProjPeriodPostingSelectCost_Proj class instead of ProjPeriodPostingSelectCost and the reason for this is I need to initialize query for the project. If you debug the standard AX class then you will notice that the function to initialize it for a project is called from the dialog() method of class "ProjPeriodPostingSelectCost_Proj "

 

If you dive into this function you will notice that the query is getting initialized here

As we are doing this fully behind the scenes and will not be calling the prompt() method so we cannot initialize the query from the base class as it does not has this function

So in order to initialize our query properly we need to call this method.Another important thing to note is the sequence of calling the methods as shown in job is important.

Thanks for reading the blog. Have a great day!!!

Rachit Garg

AX2012 : Custom lookup on Dialog control - A standard AX 2012 example

Recently while debugging a process of approving BOM, I came across a standard AX example where registerOverrideMethod() is used to create lookup on a dialog field. Thought to share with the community.

 

There are some nice blogs which explain more about this method :

http://www.artofcreation.be/2011/08/24/ax2012-sysoperation-part-3-sysoperationautomaticuibuilder/

http://devexpp.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/dynamics-ax-custom-lookup-in-dialog.html

http://swapnakallu.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/lookups-on-dialog-systablelookup-and.html

 

Apart from having the flexibility to create custom lookups on dialog, this also helps us to reuse the existing code.

VT-x features locked error resolution while setting AX2012 R2 VPC on Windows 8-64 bit machine.

Hi Friends,

I want to share this experience, recently I was configuring AX2012 R2 VPC which I downloaded from Microsoft information source, on my new HP machine having  Windows 8 64 bit operating system and Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU @ 2.40 GHz processor.

I was configuring it in an Oracle VM virtual box using Oracle VM Virtual Box Manager.

I found some really good blogs having detailed description of how to do it :

http://www.doens.be/2011/11/how-to-run-a-microsoft-ax-2012-hyper-v-on-virtualbox/

http://dynamicsnavax.blogspot.in/2011/04/how-to-run-ax2012-hyperv-on-virtualbox.html

http://axretail.blogspot.in/2012/08/ax-retail-2012-vpc-configuration-on.html


So I followed them and once the setup was completed, I started the virtual machine. To my surprise I got the below error message on starting it :
"VT-x features locked or unavailable in MSR.(VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED)"

So I again checked my setup and made sure that Hardware Virtualization is enabled in my VM settings, it was enabled but still I was getting the error.




So I started searching for the solution in various forums, I even went to Intel forums to read more about hardware virtualization. Fortunately I came across one of the forum mentioning that by default hardware virtualization is disabled in BIOS settings of most of Intel processor laptops by vendors for better performance and in order to enable it we need to go to host machine BIOS and turn on the virtualization technology.

Keeping my fingers crossed I restarted the machine, jumped into the BIOS of the machine and under system configuration group I found virtualization technology option. It was actually disabled, I turned it on then then saved the settings and exited from the BIOS. I also captured the screen through my mobile camera.

Now when I ran the AX virtual machine, it started up smoothly. Never thought that to start a VM we might need to change BIOS settings.

P.S --> The above information is based on my experience and in case you are getting the same issue that please change BIOS on your own risk or contact your vendor technical support team.

AX2012: Role of attributes in data contracts

Hi Friends,
In continuation to my previous post on Basics of attributes, I would like to take this journey further  to discuss the use DataMemberAttribute and DataContractAttribute classes provided by AX2012. My idea in this post is not to show how to create a new service or a batch process using attributes but it is to understand the underlying reason for using attributes in these areas.

In short DataMemberAttribute and DataContractAttribute classes are used to define data contracts. However I would like to talk about data contracts in this post so that we clearly understand the meaning of one liner said above .So let's begin with some initial questions which come to mind when we hear a term like "Data Contract":

What is a data contract? 
If try to understand it word by word in a simple way, contract means an agreement to exchange something between two parties, similarly data contract means that data is being exchanged between two parties.

Who are the two parties which exchanges data?
Now let's start moving towards technology, the parties involved in a data exchange are client and a service.

Who provides framework for data contract?
WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) provides the framework for data contracts.

In which format the data is exchanged?
Data exchange happens in XML. The data is serialized and deserialized (converted to and from XML) during the process of data exchange.

Who does data serialization and deserialization?
There is a serialization engine called "Data Contract Serializer" which used by WCF to convert the data to and from XML.

So now when we know about the basics of data contract along with a technical flavor so the next questions which come to mind are:

How system identifies what data needs to be exchanged?
Here comes the roles of Attributes. There are 2 attributes which are used to decorate/mark/tag/identify the data which needs to be part of a data contract. These attributes are DataContractAttribute and DataMemberAttribute.

Where to define DataContractAttribute?
To keep it simple DataContractAttribute is defined on classes. More details can be found on MSDN.

Where to define DataMemberAttribute?
DataMemberAttribute is defined on each of the members of the class which needs to be exchanged.

How to define these attributes?
In the same way we define a normal attribute. You can refer to my last post Basics of attributes as well.

Standard AX2012 out of the box provides us with these attribute classes:

DataMemberAttribute 

DataContractAttribute


Examples can be found in standard AX where these attributes are used, an example is shown below:

DataContractAttribute and DataMemberAttribute also play vital role in SysOperationFramework introduced in AX2012 and there are some very good blogs available to understand how we use these attributes in SysOperationFramework and creation of services. Some really nice articles I would recommend are:

• daxmusings
• artofcreation
• Axilicious

I hope now we are able to realize the power of attributes. They have wide area of applicability and with the ability to create your own custom attributes it is seamless. 

Thanks for reading the blog.

Cheers!!!!!

AX2012 : Understanding Attributes

Hi Friends,
I would like to discuss about the concept of attributes with an example of how we use them in AX2012. This post will be interesting to those who are new to Attributes concept. It is important to understand that Attributes come from .NET platform they are not simply implemented as language elements.To summarize the general introduction of attributes:

• Attributes are declarative information used to add metadata information to the code.
• Attributes are stored as metadata in an assembly. They are NOT part of executable code.
• Attributes information can be extracted through reflection at run time/compile time/design time.
• Attributes are extensible, you can create you own custom attributes.

An attribute can be attached by simply typing the name of the attribute enclosed in square bracket before the declaration of class/function where it needs to be applied.

In AX 2012, SysAttribute class is an abstract base class for all attribute classes. So if you have to create your own attribute class then it should be a non abstract class and must inherit from SysAttribute class. 

Attributes can be used in many different scenarios, one of the common practice is to use them in creating batch jobs through SysOperation framework.

Let's jump into some practical way to use attributes, I'll use SysObsoleteAttribute in the below example to get a feel of using attributes:

I created a new class "SampleCalculator" and a method to add two numbers:

Then I created a job to call this method

This is simple, nothing interesting till now. 

In the current method, there is a limitation that it accepts only 2 integers, there can be situations where a person wants to add n number of integers, so to improve the design and usability I thought to create a new function which accepts a list as a parameter so that we can add any number of integers, the new method looks  like below:

We test this method through job, it works good:

Now I want that if any other developer is using the class "SampleCalculator"  to perform the addition calculations, he should prefer using the new function "addMultipleNum()" instead of the old function "add2Num()".

Also, I do not want to delete the previous function as it may lead to compilation errors in system in case the previous function is used somewhere. So what do I do ??? The answer in such situation is use ATTRIBUTES. 

AX2012 provides us with an Attribute class SysObsoleteAttribute for such situations.

I can decorate my first function add2Num() with SysObsoleteAttribute and to do this I simply have to add the attribute in function definition as shown below:

Now the question is how does it impacts the overall process, to know this just compile the job and you will notice that the compiler gives a warning and immediately tells me that this function which I am using in my job is Obsolete.

This is Okay but does it tells me what to do if this function is Obsolete? No not now. 

Can I add some more information to the attribute I attached? YES :)

While defining SysObsoleteAttribute you can see that we can define two optional parameters:

So now I added the explanation in the first parameter for the attribute, notice that value in second boolean parameter "_isError" is passed as false for now.

Now if I compile the job, the warning is more informative, it tells me which function should I use:

This is cool. Now I can inform someone other developers to use the new function, when the try to use the old one.

Now let us change second Boolean parameter "_isError" value to true, compile the code and see what happens:

You will notice that compiler gave an error instead of warning. This is quite helpful in situations where we want to avoid use of some function. This is an example of attributes behavior at compile time.  

This attribute class "SysObsoleteAttribute" is also helpful for ISV's when they release new hot fixes  versions of there product and want there partners to start using new functions when they customize the solution.

An example of SysObsoleteAttribute can also be found in SysDictClass 

There are many attribute classes provided by default in AX. You can get the list by simply looking the type hierarchy browser of SysAttribute class and start playing with them :).

Thanks for reading the post!!!!!