AIF Framework in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Part 1

Following the features of Application Integration Frameworl in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

. Enables companies to integrate and communicate with external business processes and partners.

 

. Exchange of data through formatted XML

 

. Formatted XML is referred to as a document

 

. Service can be hosted on

 

    . AOS

 

    . IIS

 

AIF Service Types:

 

There are following three types of  Services:

 

1. Document Services:

 

Query-based services that can be used to exchange data with external systems by sending and receiving XML documents

 

2. Custom Services:

 

Can be used by developers to expose any X++ logic such as X++ classes and their members, through a service interface.

 

 Example of Custom Services is Business Operation Framework.

 

3. System Services:

 

Provided by Microsoft Dynamics AX .System services include the query service,the metadata service, and the user session service.System services are not customizable ,and they are not mapped to any query or X++ code. 

 

 In this session i will explain only Document Services.

 

Document Services:

. The XML Document Framework contains these types of classes:

 

     . Axd<Document> classes (also known as an Axd class)

 

          . containg the business logic for related entities.

 

. Ax<Table> classes

 

    . abstraction of a table and encapsulate the business logic associated with creation and modification of records in the database table.

 

AXD Document Classes:

 

These are the main methods called when data is created or updated.

1.prepareForSaveExtended.

 

  .Called when records are created.

 

2.prepareForUpdateExtended.

 

 .Called when records are updated.

Docuement Service Operations:

.create

This item creates a record for a new item in the database.

 

.delete

 

This operation deletes a record in the database.

 

.find

 

This opearation searches for the specified database record.

 

.findkeys

 

This operation retrieves a list of entity keys that correspond to the specified search criteria

 

.read

 

This operation retrieves the specified record from the database.

 

.Update

 

This operation updates the record in the databaseOnly the fields that are contained in the message are updated.Values for all other database fields remain unchanged.

 

Implementation:

Now I will show you the implementation of the Application Integration Framework.

 

Note:In this session I am showing only the example of the Document Service of AIF.

 

Step 1:

 

First of all i have created the Project in which i have create two tables and then make relations between them.In the first table I  have created the employee table which contains the fields i.e emp date of birth,emp name,emp number and than I have created the employee department table in which i have created the fields employee department and employee experience.Employee is the parent table and employee department is the child table.Than made the Query to fetch the data from these tables.Note that i have created the outer join in the query to fetch all the records and than set the property update =  true because we will also update the record in this example.

 

you can see tables of my project in the below image:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And in the below image you can see the Query that I have created you can also see its properties.

Step 2:

Now we will go and create our document service .

just go to the tools->application integration framework->create document service

as you can see in the below image:

 

 A new wizard will open.Now click the next button

A new screen will come and than select your query that you have created in early step.

You can see the below image.

 

Now click the next button.A new wizard will come here you can see the axd classes names that are generated and then select operations that you want to perform through this service. and then click on the checkboxes under axbc generation.These are the proxy classes need by the Application Integration Framework.

You can see the screen in the image below:

Now click the next button. A new wizard will open and than click the generate button.This will create the new project which contains all the proxy classes that will be use by the service consumer.As you can see in the image below:

Now we need to register that service as valid AX service.Just right click the service file that I have highlighted in the above project and than go to adds-in and than click the register service.It will take some time to register.

Now our service is ready but not yes accessible from the outside world we need to create the inbound ports.

just go to the System Administration -> Inbound ports.

A new screen will open as you can see in the below image:

New click on the new button as you can see in the above image to create new inbound port.
And than enter the name of the port as i have highlighted in the above image and than check the
check box include exceptions in fault.Checking this checkbox is not necessary but its for development point of view that if during the insertion of data if some exceptions occur than we can easily see that.

Now click the Service operations button as you can see in the above image.After clicking this button a new wizard will open as you can see in the below image.

 

 



Now select the service operations that we have created in the project.These service operations will be consumed by this port.

After selecting the service operations close this wizard and then click the activate button as you can see the second last image in the above.

Now your service will be activate and is able to consume by the consumer code.After the activation of the service you will get the WSDL URI that will be use in the consumer code to refrence this service. As you can see the image below the generated WSDL URI.

Now  the process of how to consume this service I will show this in the next part 2.
I hope this session will help you on how to configure AIF service.

Thanks

Muhammad Zahid.

 

 

Unit of Work Framework In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Unit of Work Framework is use to commit number of records in a single Transaction.The main reason for introducing unit of work is that it is impossible to insert the lines table record before its header table  because there is a relation between the header table and the lines table.The Recid of the header table is comes as a foreign key in the child table.

Lets took an example as you can see in the microsoft dynamics ax there are two tables i.e custtransopen and custtransopenline.These two tables are related with each other CustTrabsOpen is the parent table and custtransopenline is the child table.

As you can see in the below image about  these two tables and there relations.

There is a common field on both the tables i.e amountcur.

In the parent table i.e in the custtransopen table this amountcur contains the total of the custtransopenlines amountcur.
Now we cant insert the records in the custtransopenline table because it needs the recid of the parent table i.e custtransopen and similarly we cant insert thet record first in the parent table i.e custtransopen because it needs the total amountcur from the custtransopenline.

To resolve this issue Unit of Work Franework is introduced.It allows to perform create, update and delete operations without worrying about the order of those and without a need to specify surrogate key values. It will all be done automatically in the kernel!

Now to show the Implementation of the Unit Of Work I have created two tables i.e invoiceheader and invoiceline and than made the relation between them.The invoiceheader contains the field i.e totalquantity which holds the total quantity of the invoiceline field i,e quantity.

Below image will show you these two tables,their fields and there relations.

Now the below  job will insert the invoiceheader with calculated totals and 2 lines. Note, that there is no place where recid is mentioned in the code. Business data only.

One thing that I need to mention there is that.In the above code I have write the code i.e "line.invoiceheader(header);"

This is the method use to link the invoiceline table and the parent table.To call this method we have to first set the property CreateNavigationPaneProperty to "Yes".As shown in the image below:

Now When I run this job an exception will occured as you can see in the below image.

I have run a job due to this issue the exception is occured to resolve this issue I have to make a static method inside the class and also include server tags in that method.as you can see in the below image.



Now when I call this method the data will be inserted successfully.you can see the below image of tables which contains the data that I have inserted.

 

 

 

 

Thanks

Muhammad Zahid.

Links on Fields on Forms

When we open the form.There are some fields which are like hyperlinks and when we click on these
fields a new form is open.

As you can see the example below just go to the Account Receivable->Customers->All Customers.
The new form will open with fields cotaining the hyperlink.

And when I click on this field a new form is open as you can see in the below image.

 

 

 

Basically these fields physically exist in other table and they are showing on this table through foreign key.

 

The question is how the form is open when we click on these fields.The simple answer is that to open the form on this field just go to the table in which this field actually resides and than in the property of that table set the formref=formname.

Now The Query that shows the data on the Preview Pane is "CustListPagePreviewPane".In that Query there is table i.e custtable which uses that field i.e "CustGroup".Now we will go into the relation of that table to show that what is the parent table in which this field actually exist.

You can see the image of the custtable in the below image.























Now we will go to the property of the table CustGroup and see the FormRef propery.

As you can see the name of the form in the formref property.This is the form which open when we click on the link custgroup.

Thanks

Muhammad Zahid.