axCoder

Microsoft Dynamics Ax developer's blog

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Book review: “Quality Assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions”

As some other bloggers, I have received the book for review. Here are my impressions…

This book is written about several aspects of quality assurance in Dynamics Ax implementation projects. I think the main focus is on customizations development because most topics related to it.

Quality in the following areas is covered by the book:

  • Code
  • User interface
  • Security
  • Performance
  • Organizational

Detail level differs from topic to topic: for example code topics contain introductory material and detailed BP rules, user interface topic consists of very concrete checklists and security aspects are showed almost only as general word about trustworthy computing. The book is not very thick (~150 pages), but contains information only in textual form (text, tables, lists), so information density is higher than in most modern books filled with screenshots and code samples.

My overall impression - good enough as introductory book. It can be useful if you are:

  • Novice developer and want to have overview about what quality in dynamics ax means
  • Some kind of manager who want to build a development process with focus on quality (you can borrow some rules and checklists)
  • Some other non-developer who wants to have overall outline about quality in Ax

I think, there are some topics, which should be covered by the future books of such direction, but haven't been covered by this book:

  • Administration issuer
  • Functional setup issues

Other topics (such as end-user training) which are parts of real implementation projects but haven't been represented in the book

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Sidax 0.4 b 6 will show you what groups can access selected main menu items


download (85K)

What's new:


  • multiple selection of main menu items

  • new item named "Show access" in the main menu item's context menu. If you choose this item all groups which have access to that item will be output to infolog

Monday, March 24, 2008

BeauSQL -- SQL beautifier

Download: binaries, sources



The purpose is to make SQL traces code more structured and core readable.

This tool consists of two parts:


  • DLL, which is written in Haskell - a very interesting functional programming language, and it do actual work of parsing and pretty printing

  • Small class in Ax which is a thin wrapper for the DLL and button to place in SQL trace form.


This is the first version, it is very experimantal and tested under Ax 3 only.

PS. Some code was stealed from cs4 tool for BAAN

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

How to manage rights by code

Some times ago I nedd to copy 8 security groups and remove access to some menu items in these new copies. I wrote a job for that purpose and now I've placed it to axaptapedia here.

Friday, February 08, 2008

Google Desktop Calendar Gadget update


Just added half-transparent dates from previous and next monthes

download (81K)

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Brainbench results





Brainbench is a site dedicated for online testing. There are some free tests which I have done some time ago. My transcript id is 6941773

Monday, January 28, 2008

Using Mantis web service in Ax 3.0 via MSSOAP COM object

Just added a small example to Axaptapedia