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Former Microsoft Great Plains, or prior to Great Plains Software purchase byMicrosoft the ERP name was Great Plains Dynamics/eEnterprise, has multiplemodification and programming options and tools. Current trend is defined byMicrosoft and as you can expect encourages you into .Net programming realm: C#,VB.Net. If you work as a programmer in IT department, you should first researchsuch tools as Microsoft Dynamics GP eConnect, SRS (Microsoft SQL Server ReportingServices), GP Integration Manager (VBA scripting is probably easy for you toexperiment you can empower IM with such an easy scripting language, however thisis rather Microsoft legacy, not .Net). If you are comfortable with web publishingand SQL stored procedures you can create simple applications, which will enable GPdata inquiry via web forms. If the tools above don t do the job, you shouldfamiliarize yourself with additional options: Microsoft Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity gives you unlimited control over GP,however it is proprietary tools designed by Great Plains Software in 1990th, and assuch it is not easy to begin programming in Dexterity on your own. We wouldrather encourage you to understand Dexterity technology architecture to be able toidentify Dex customization projects and outsource them to Dexterity developmentfirm. Dex is typically distributed via so called chunks, which you copy into yourGP workstation directory and when you launch GP next time, you get the invitation tointegrate Dexterity chunk. The traces of Dexterity influence you can see in MS SQLServer GP databases: DYNAMICS and Company, where all dex tables have DEX_ROW_IDautoincrement column; Dynamics.Dic is Dex dictionary, which is interpreted byDex.EXE dexterity executable. The assembly of your GP set of applications isdescribed in Dynamics.set file. Dexterity settings could be reviewed in Dex.ini SQL Scripting. Try first this surgery where you can not really harm the data (asSQL is really powerful and at the same time dangerous you issue delete statement and your data is gone) in reporting. Reports could be based on SQL views orStored Procedures and you can deploy several reporting tools: SRS and CrystalReports, for example. To get the idea about Dexterity tables, in GP openTools->Resource Description->Tables. When you get sufficient comfort level to moveon to more interactive SQL scripting routines, such as data integration, please knowthe secret you can not add or delete columns from Dex tables if you do so Dexterity will not be able to work with altered table. The only what you can do isto add indexes, however try to avoid placing Dex tables into replication if you doso upgrade will require dropping replication GUID columns
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group. http://www.albaspectrum.comhe lp@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving MS Dynamics GPcustomers locally in Houston: Richmond, Rosenberg, Dallas, Katy, Sugar Land,Galveston; Chicago: Naperville, Aurora, Morris, Glen Ellyn, Winchester, Oak Park,Lyons, Alsip, Lemont, Seneca, Ottawa, Joliet, Plainfield, Romeoville, Barrington,Crystal Lake, Rockford, DeKalb, Wheaton, Lisle, Downers Grove, Batavia, St. Charles,Norway. Dex customizations USA/Canada nationwide support is available via remotesupport/connection: California, Minnesota, Florida, New York, Virginia, Oregon,Arizona, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico.
