Book review: “Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Programming: Getting Started”

See the book description on the publisher's site: "Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 Programming: Getting Started"

When I've received the book, I first thought about beginning of my experience with Ax: in 2003 I worked with BAAN and planned to become a developer for Ax 3. I have decompiled developer's guide and best practice chm, downloaded it to my Sony SL10 and read it for month or two in the Moscow subway during daily commute. I can recall some difficulties I've met and I expect from every book for beginners to go beyond Dev Guide and BP describing these particular areas.

I think the main two topics to learn for every Ax developer are:

• Dynamics Ax development platform
  
• X++ code that implements business logic
  

Historically, platform was the more clear area docs, but has some dark corners, but business logic was less documented and the knowledge transferred mostly from the code itself, more experienced colleagues, and online communities.

So I tried to search for following topics:

1. Links to external information sources such as MSDN, Partner Source, internet communities
   
2. Data access (Ax have a very specific SQL implementation)
   
3. Forms layout
   
4. Business logic patterns
   
5. Tools and techniques to extract information from X++ code
   

BTW one of the book reviewers, Harish Mohanbabu, is known by his blog and free Ax tools.

First, the book contains list of online resources links related to Ax, such as blogs, axaptapedia, official sites, so on. The only thing I wish to add it to explain what partner source and what customer source are, and how to get access – it is very frequent question from newbies.

Database manipulation is described in several chapters, the description is easy to understand, full of example screenshots and can be useful for new developers, but I missed description of union joins (which is new to Ax2009 and I haven't seen much usage in the existing X++ code)

Forms-related information is shown mostly by example; you should refer to developer's guide for more detail. I think, it should be better to provide more information on different form layout templates, and some existing form patterns. Anyway, I think, a novice programmer can learn basic form structure prom the chapter and can use some more advanced techniques such as splitters and edit methods.

There are some chapters related to most frequently used business modules, such as inventory, ledger and accounts receivable/payable, each starting with small entity-relationship diagram of basic tables with examples of using Ledger posting framework, adding new dimension, etc..

The topic about tools contains example of usage of cross reference with screenshots, but profiler and trace parser have not been mentioned.

So these were topics that I was interested in due to I remember I had problems with, when I started to learn Ax.

In addition there is lots of information related to:

• Other platform areas (such as X++ basics, AOT nodes, architecture, File export and import), which have not caused learning problems for me but maybe can cause to other novice developers.
  
• Parts of platform I have not used (Application Integration Framework , Enterprise Portal, Webservices) - so I cannot say anything about them
  

The book contains an example of car rental module (with full sources in xpo's). Chapters of the book describe corresponding pieces of example code and I think it's a good manner to write books for developer.

I definitely recommend the book for novice developers as a good addition to manuals that go with the product and msdn.

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

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