I am sharing a tabax successor for Ax6 as an example of usage WPF control.
The form uses standard tab control from WPF with a custom template.
Also you can use it as an example of event handling.
The code has a problem which I can not resolve now: if you press a middle or right mouse button on a tab, vontr scrolls to the start - so you can accidentially close wrong tab. Now the workaround provided: if such event occured, event handler uses selected tab instead of tab under click
Just updated my old sample to produce DGML in addition to .DOT, so now you can view cross-references in VS2010 interactively (filter, rearrange so on). For example picture above shows relations of LedgerVoucherObject.check
I draw Data-Control flow diagrams for better understanding of some process in code. It looks something like that:
Legend:
Such diagrams help me later to understand place of some piece of code in some process in system.
It is critical not to draw unnecessary details on a diagram and stay focused on the current task, in other case a diagram will be unreadable. For example diagram in this post is near the edge of readability – lots of intersections are signs of it.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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
