Microsoft Dynamics AX

Microsoft Dynamics AX

File:Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 icon.png
File:Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Multisite.jpg Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 (Multisite example)
Developer(s)	Microsoft Corporation
Stable release	5.0.593.0 (2009) / June 2, 2008 (2008-06-02)
Operating system	Windows Server 2003/2008 (AOS), Microsoft Windows (Clients)
Platform	x86
Available in	Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch (Netherlands), English, Estonian, Finnish, Dutch (Belgium), French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian,Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Type	Enterprise resource planning
License	MS-EULA
Website	http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/ax/default.mspx

Microsoft Dynamics AX is one of Microsoft’s enterprise resource planning software products. It is part of the Microsoft Dynamics family.

History

Microsoft Dynamics AX was originally developed as Axapta in Denmark before Damgaard was merged with Navision Software A/S in 2000. The combined company, initially NavisionDamgaard, later Navision A/S, was then ultimately acquired by the Microsoft Corporation in the summer of 2002. Before the merger, Axapta was initially released in March, 1998 in the Danish and U.S. markets. Today, it is available and supported in forty-five languages in most of the world.

Custom AX development and modification is done with its own IDE, MorphX, resides in the same client application that a normal day-to-day user would access, thus allowing development to take place on any instance of the client. The development language used in Axapta is X++.

On May 26, 2008, Microsoft completed developing the latest version (2009) in facilities spanning the globe and including sites in Vedbæk, Denmark; Kiev, Ukraine; Fargo, North Dakota, United States; and Redmond, Washington, United States.

The history becomes apparent in the mixed concepts in design and programming and in the rudimentary documentation which has been removed to a large extent (which was deemed better than providing it with contradictions or wrong information).

MDCC

MDCC or Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen was once the primary development center for Dynamics AX. For a long time, the development of several key components of AX has been moving to other sites like Redmond and Fargo. MDCC is located in Vedbæk and also houses Microsoft Dynamics NAV and several other Microsoft Dynamics family products. MDCC employs about 900 people of around 40 different nationalities, with current hiring focus oriented towards Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Ukraine and Romania.

Versions

The early versions (from 1.0 to 3.0) were called Axapta, while the later versions (from 3.0 SP6 to AX 2009) are called Dynamics AX.

Damgaard

Development of Axapta began in 1983 at Danish company Damgaard Data A/S. The software was mainly targeted at the European market, though the North American market grew rapidly following the release of Axapta 2.1 in 2000.

Version	Date	Description
Axapta 1.0	Mar 1998	The first version of Axapta was released in the US and in Denmark in March 1998 by Danish company Damgaard A/S. Like all following versions, it supported both Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle database servers. Notable features were financial, trade, inventory management, logistics and production.
Axapta 1.5	Nov 1998	The second major version of Axapta was released in Norway, Sweden, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and the European Union in November 1998.
Axapta 2.0	Jul 1999	The third major version of Axapta was released to customers in July 1999. Notable new features were the Project Accounting module, Warehouse Management (WMS), External OLAP, Option Pack concept, ActiveX support, COM-connector and an early release of the Axapta Object Server which allowed offloading of some operations from the clients onto a separate server.
Axapta 2.1	Jan 2000	This release stemmed from market demands from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain. It was the fourth major version of Axapta and was released in January 2000. The most notable new feature was the addition of a Web tool called the Customer Self-Service (CSS) which is the precursor to today's Enterprise Portal. With Axapta 2.1 SP3 (Service Pack 3), the AOS (Axapta Object Server) was introduced making Axapta the first fully three tier ERP-system in the market.

Navision-Damgaard

Following the merger of the two Danish companies Navision and Damgaard, Axapta was to be known as Navision Damgaard Axapta for versions 2.5 and 3.0 (up until 3.0 SP5).

Version	Date	Description
Axapta 2.5	Dec 2000	As the fifth major release, Axapta 2.5 brought with it a complete web applications development environment, the Project module, Banking and OLAP. It was released first to Denmark, Austria and United Kingdom in December 2000.
Axapta 2.5 Market Pack	Oct 2001	This market pack was released for Axapta 2.5 in October 2001 in France and Italy. This new application layer contained the Customer Relationship Management module (CRM or Marketing Automation), Commerce Gateway and Product Builder (both Client-side and CSS-side (Web)).

Microsoft (current)

Microsoft acquired Navision Damgaard during the summer of 2002. Navision Damgaard Axapta was first renamed to Microsoft Business Solutions Axapta, then to Microsoft Dynamics AX for versions 3.0 SP6, 4.0 and 2009.

Version	Date	Description
Axapta 3.0	Oct 2002	The sixth major Axapta release brought with it the Microsoft Axapta Enterprise Portal, new intercompany collaboration functionality, actualized and rebuilt user security and system configuration, expanded geographical reach (more countries), demand planning and enhanced partner productivity tools.
Dynamics AX 4.0	Mar 2006	The seventh major Axapta release brought with it an updated look and feel. As the first version that Microsoft was involved in from the beginning it attempted to integrate better with existing Microsoft technologies. For example, the AOS became a true Windows service, a .Net business connector was provided, CLR Interoperability was introduced and XML data exchanges were supported through a set of code classes (Application Integration Framework), full Unicode support was introduced and a new Service Management module.
Dynamics AX 2009	Jun 2008	Originally named AX 4.1, later renamed to AX 5.0 (and finally AX 2009), the eighth major release of Axapta brings with it yet more improvements to the UI. This new version adds role-based concepts to both the Enterprise Portal and windows clients, support for timezones (utc), a new Site inventory dimension, and Enterprise Portal development through Visual Studio projects.
Dynamics AX 2011	Q1 - 2011	Sometimes dubbed AX 6, it is said to include additional improvements to the user interface and application enhancements focused on specific industries like Retail, Media & Entertainment, and Public sector. Originally AX2011 was due to be released toward the middle of 2010, but this has since been put back to Q1 2011.

Features (modules)

Microsoft Dynamics AX contains 19 core modules :

Traditional core (since Axapta 2.5)

• General Ledger, composed of ledger, sales tax, currency and fixed assets features
• Bank Management, where cash is received and paid out
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM), where Business Relations (customers, vendors, and leads) are contacted and maintained
• Accounts Receivable, where orders are entered, shipped and invoiced
• Accounts Payable, where purchase orders are issued and goods received into inventory
• Inventory Management, where Inventory is valued and managed
• Master Planning, where purchase and production planning takes place
• Production, where bill of materials is defined and manufacturing is tracked
• Product Builder, where product models are created and maintained
• Human Resources, where employee information is kept
• Project Accounting, where projects are created and tracked primarily from an accounting perspective
• Basic, where data configuration is performed
• Administration Module, where system configuration is performed

Extended core

The following modules are part of the core of AX 2009 (AX 5.0) and available on a per-license basis in AX 4.0 :

• Shop Floor Control
• Cost Accounting
• Questionnaire
• Balanced Scorecards
• Service Management
• Expense Management
• Payroll Management
• Environmental Management

External components

Several external components are also available:

• Enterprise Portal for Dynamics AX (built on Sharepoint Services)
• Microsoft SQL Reporting Services integration
• Application Integration Framework (Webservices + Biztalk adapter)
• A .Net Business Connector for third party software (A COM adapter is also available)
• Microsoft Dynamics Mobile 1.5 development tools

Architecture

The Microsoft Dynamics AX software is composed of four major components:

• The Database Server, a database that stores the Microsoft Dynamics AX data
• The File Server, a folder containing the Microsoft Dynamics AX application files
• The Application Object Server(s) (AOS), a service that controls all aspects of Microsoft Dynamics AX's operation
• The Client(s), the actual user interface into Microsoft Dynamics AX

See also the book Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0

MorphX and X++

MorphX is an integrated development environment in Microsoft Dynamics AX that allows developers to graphically design data types, base enumerations, tables, queries, forms, menus and reports. MorphX supports drag-and-drop and is very intuitive. It also allows access to any application classes that are available in the application, by launching the X++ code editor.

Because MorphX uses referencing to link objects together, changes in, for example, datatypes of fieldnames will automatically be reflected in all places where they are used (such as forms or reports). Furthermore, changes made through MorphX will be reflected in the application immediately after compilation.

Microsoft Dynamics AX also offers support for version control systems (VCS) integrated with the IDE, allowing collaboration in development. There is also a tool for reverse-engineering table structures and class structures to Visio. The actual implementation limits the practical use of both these features.

X++ itself is the programming language behind MorphX, and belongs to the curly brackets and .-operator class of programming languages (like C# or Java). It is an object-oriented class-based single dispatch language. X++ is a derivative of C++ (both lack the finally keyword for example) to which garbage collection and language integrated SQL queries were added.

Code samples

X++ integrates SQL queries into standard Java-style code. Following are three equivalent examples (result-wise), though the first one has generally better performance. Samples #2 and #3 hint at an object-like behavior from table buffers.

Sample #1

/// <summary>
/// This job is used as an X++ sample
/// </summary>
public static void xppTest1(Args _args)
{
    UserInfo userInfo;
    ;

    update_recordset userInfo
        setting enable = NoYes::No
        where userInfo.id != 'Admin'
            && userInfo.enable;
}

Sample #2

/// <summary>
/// This job is used as an X++ sample
/// </summary>
public static void xppTest2(Args _args)
{
    UserInfo userInfo;
    ;

    ttsbegin;

    while select forupdate userInfo
        where userInfo.id != 'Admin'
            && userInfo.enable
    {
        userInfo.enable = NoYes::No;
        userInfo.update();
    }
    
    ttscommit;
}

Sample #3

/// <summary>
/// This job is used as an X++ sample
/// </summary>
public static void xppTest3(Args _args)
{
    UserInfo userInfo;
    ;

    select forupdate userInfo
        where userInfo.id != 'Admin'
           && userInfo.enable;
            
    ttsbegin;
            
    while (userInfo)
    {
        userInfo.enable = NoYes::No;
        userInfo.update();
        
        next userInfo;
    }
    
    ttscommit;
}

Future

The LINQ library was first used in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 for out-of-the-box SSRS reporting. It is expected that Visual Studio and the LINQ library will be used more extensively in future versions of AX.

Presence on the World Wide Web

One of the most notable sources of information with regards to Axapta (prior to the Microsoft purchase) was technet.navision.com, a newsgroup which grew to a considerable number of members and posts up until 2002. Following the incorporation of Axapta into Microsoft's Business Solution suite, the newsgroup's content was transferred over to the Microsoft Business Solutions newsgroup. The oldest technet post that can be found today dates back to August 2000. During the Axapta 3.0 era, this newsgroup in conjunction with secured official Microsoft websites (Partnersource for Microsoft Partners and Axapta resellers and Customersource for licensed Axapta customers) accounted for most of the official documentation sources on Axapta. During this time freely accessible documentation remained scarce. Following Microsoft's release of Dynamics AX 4.0, Axapta's presence on the World Wide Web greatly improved through heightened interest from professional blogs as well as a continually improving presence on MSDN. Though MSDN contained mostly placeholders immediately following the release, it now contains a wealth of information from a complete SDK to white papers and code samples.

External links

• Microsoft Dynamics AX Official Website
• Microsoft Dynamics AX on MSDN
  • Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009
  • Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0
  • Best Practices for Microsoft Dynamics AX Development
• Microsoft Dynamics AX Community Information
• Axaptapedia
• Microsoft Dynamics AX support blog, good source of real life information