Recommended: System Errors? Click here to Fix your PC »
Microsoft Great Plains or former Great Plains Software Dynamics / eEnterprise/Dynamics C/S+ historically was designed in Dexterity, which is in turn shellwritten in C. In the late 1990th GPS ported Dexterity to Microsoft C, now forversion 10.0 it is created in Visual Studio, where it also uses some .Net assembliesto improve Dex graphical interface. Dexterity so far, including GP 10.0 isrecommended tool for customization, modification, integration and reporting. Let sbriefly review what is new and what is traditional in customization instruments: Sharepoint in Workflow. This seems to be cool opportunity. We heard so manyyears about workflow in Great Plains, some developers tried to marry something likeLotus Notes with GP to produce workflow imitation via messaging and within Lotus andlinks to GP documents. Now MS Sharepoint seems to do the job Web Services. If you are familiar with eConnect architecture, you can imagine howweb services interface works with eConnect. In this sense web services-eConnecttandem is restricted to eConnect functionality, such as limitation on postingbatches, however you can combine eConnect calls in your web services with customdirect SQL Server programming. It is also possible to use Albaspectrum postingserver to supplement eConnect with posting logic you can place approved batchesvia web service, calling simple stored procedure Dexterity. As Microsoft is referring, it can handle COM objects, however thisfeature was first introduced in Dexterity 7.0, so it is probably not overly new. There are multiple publications on the web about Great Plains Dexterity, where youcan find detailed answers on this IDE architecture. You should be aware about Dexfeatures: Dynamics.dic, Dynamics.set, Dex.ini, Dex.exe, DEX_ROW_ID, etc. ReportWriter, Modifier these two tools are in fact GP Dexterity applications,they exist over 10 years now and have numerous modification and reporting scenariosimplemented in production GP ERP environments Extender or even eOne (advanced version of) Extender these are also Dexapplications and eOne version allows you to include Dex Sanscript scripts to alterextended form business logic .Net development. You can use C# or VB .Net to add .Net assemblies to GPworkstation interface, however they have to operate with Dexterity forms in turn, sowe are talking about extension logic only eConnect. This SDK and tool was introduced around 2002/2003 to open GP backofficeto eCommerce developers. Great Tool, you should consider to port customized logicto eConnect versus other tools Business Portal. If you remember old eXXX series of products: eOrder,eRequisition, eEmployee, etc those were ASP applications, which you could modifywith Visual Interdev (however upgrade would wipe out your customization and you hadto reapply it to new version). At this time BP 10.0 is Sharepoint application withgreat options to extend it with Visual Studio projects. Some customers are tryingto do the same that they tried to do with old eXXX products modify existingscreens in Requisition Management, for example this seems to be not trivial andnot really the right way to go Speculations about the future. Probably former Project Green, where Navision,Axapta, Solomon, Great Plains were considered to be reassembled and repackaged intoMicrosoft Business Modules: Financials, Manufacturing, Distribution, etc. is nowdeemphasized in order to preserve AX, GP, NAV IDE: Morph X, Dexterity, CSide. Inour opinion it is probably good option to provide reasonably smooth migrationtools in the future. For example if you are mid-size business in the past and nowyou went public and internationally you should get migration from GP to AX
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group http://www.albaspectrum.comhe lp@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving client in Chicagodowntown and metro: Naperville, Downers Grove, Wheaton, Romeoville, Aurora,Plainfield, Joliet, Morris, Seneca, Marseilles, Ottawa, LaSalle, Oswego, Montgomery,Lisle, Bolingbrook, Winchester, Hinsdale, Willowbrook. Darien, Westmont. Lemont, DesPlaines, Villa Park, Plano, Channahon, Elgin, Batavia, Crystal Lake, DeKalb,Sterling, Rockford. With reasonable travel we can serve you in Springfield, Peoria,Bloomington, Normal, St. Luis, Milwaukee. Local service is also available inHouston and Dallas areas: Richmond, Rosenberg, Katy, Galveston, Sugar Land
