fedotenko.info

This is a blog of Dennis Fedotenko - a well known proffessional in Ax functionality and development. He writes rare, but usually his articles can be a key for understanding principles behind ax functionality.

Dennis has a great reputation in Russian Ax community, and now he translated some of his articles to English.

San Diego

If you live in San Diego or know that area well, please contact me mbelugin@gmail.com

Это тоже не стоит транслировать на акфорум :)

Mental framework

Review of the book “Managing your supply chain using Microsoft dynamics ax 2009”

After about 5 years of Ax development I’ve recognized that the model of Dynamics Ax functionality which I have in my brain is like photosynth – some areas, I worked with, covered by consistent pictures, but others are represented by random shots without high level overview.

The majority of existing materials about Ax – like trainings, documentation, so on, use “hands on” approach – little introduction and very detailed description using screenshots, particular sequences of steps in term of buttons, etc.

So I feel that there is a gap between short intros of documentation and very detailed contents (for example Russian docs contains of 2 volumes >1000 pages each).

That’s why I was very interested when Dr. Scott Hamilton sent me kindly the book, which was written to give “mental framework for putting together the details” learned from various sources . So below are my impressions.

The book contains 426 pages, and most of them are text description of Ax functionality: no screenshots, no concrete steps – just text, tables and business process flowcharts. Thus, the information density is quite high.

The book consists of 15 chapters, each dedicated for some functional area. All chapters are in scope of SCM (you can see TOC at Amazon). Each chapter contain description of a functional area, case studies and executive summary.

New features of Ax2009 (such as sites and purchase requisition) are reflected.

What I like about the book

• The book met my expectations about abstraction level it have no redundant details, which can be obtained from products docs and training, and contains enough for making mental model of SCM modules.
• There are lots of tables showing how ax behavior depends on parameter combinations – it helps to understand the space of different implementation scenarios.
  
• As I mentioned before the most important features of ax2009 are described

What can be done better

• Some case studies are very brief – I’d prefer to include more detailed business scenarios and more implementation details. (But maybe I should read some book about common business practice instead – could you recommend me such a book?)

Overall impression

I’d buy the book if I haven’t one. I recommend it for everybody who want to have a consistent view of Ax SCM functionality.

PS. there is also a new book by Dr. Hamilton - Managing Lean Manufacturing using Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009

AxForm.info for English-speakers

AxForum.info is the one of the largest Russian communities related to Dynamics systems.

Though it has a section in English there are lots of info in Russian there. Some of English speakers read the forum via online translators.

If you have and idea how to make AxForum.info more suitable for English-speaking people, please post to that thread

Bulgaria

Does anybody from bulgaria reading this blog? Please, contact me mbelugin@gmail.com

вот это не надо транслировать на аксфорум :)

Search for C#

It is obvious for somebody, but it can help somebody novice.

Since version 4 Dyanmics Ax requires .NET framework installation, so you can rely on the fact that .NET FW exists. There is also constantly improving intargetion of .NET in X++, so you can use .NET framework as a huga library of various utilities. For example, Ax uses System.Text.RegularExpression for checking e-mail format.

So sometimes, you can search the internet for code snippet, performing some task, you need, but if you type "http .net" you can get lots of irrelevant results since .net is an often part of web page address. Type "http C#" instead and you probably get what you want.

SQL Server 2008 R2 what's new

Interesting announce of new features in SQL Server 2008 R2

PowerShell + Ax

Just added a small article to axaptapedia about administering Ax with PowerShell.