Chapter 1, Preparing Our Solution, provides both the theory and practical steps that are followed when starting work on a new solution. This includes minimizing code footprint; creating a model, project, and label file; configuring source control; and designing the technical solution and test plans.

Chapter 2, Creating Data Structures, guides us through the creation of the data structures used for our hypothetical solution, bringing in new concepts such as table inheritance, extended data types, enumerated types, and referential integrity.

Chapter 3, Creating the User Interface, includes the creation of the user interface using standard design patterns for development of the forms and menu structure. We also demonstrate how to make form logic reusable by moving code to a class.

Chapter 4, Creating Business Logic and Hooking into Core AX, covers how to handle table events in a class for easier reusability by adding navigation and using number sequences. It also includes how to hook into core AX using eventing and delegates to minimize the footprint on standard code.

Chapter 5, Adding Business Intelligence, provides practical hands-on guidance for the creation of parts in order to provide real-time, pervasive business intelligence to our users through Info parts, Form parts, Cues, and Cue groups. Also covered is the interaction between form parts and the host form and how to control queries programmatically.

Chapter 6, Extending the Solution, lets you dive deeper into the solution we have developed by adding secondary list pages, drop dialogs, and reusable business logic with data contracts and exposing business logic to external applications through services.

Chapter 7, Designing Your Security Model, covers the design and development of the security of our solution, including roles, duties, privileges, and process cycles. We also cover code access permissions and how to secure data through the use of data policies (extensible data security).

Chapter 8, Customizing Standard AX, provides guidance on how (and where) to modify standard or third-party code without suffering the maintenance cost associated with upgrading the modified code. Also included is using standard frameworks, demonstrated by example of vendor electronic payments.

Chapter 9, Advanced Features and Frameworks, demystifies the more advanced topics such as the SysOperation framework, global address book, and the financial dimension framework through clear practical examples of how these should be used.

Chapter 10, Advanced Development Techniques, covers date effective tables, exception handling, computed columns on views, and controlling the tier our code runs on. We also step into the world of using metadata, making sense of advanced techniques many may shy away from.

Chapter 11, Unit and Performance Testing, covers practical guidance on unit and performance testing, including how to create automated test plans that help us avoid the regression that changes often incur. Performance testing and diagnosis is explained through the use of the code profiler, which covers analysis on both the code and database performance.

Appendix A, Efficient Design and Development with Microsoft Dynamics AX, covers the technical overview of Dynamics AX, models, layers, and the integrated development environment.

Appendix B, Using Version Control, provides guidance on how to use version control covering the interaction between version control and models and layers, how to build your solution, and how version control works with label files.

Appendix C, Code Editor Scripts, provides information and code samples on how to extend the standard code editor scripts, saving your time while developing code.

The easiest way to follow the code samples in this book is to use one of the Microsoft Dynamics 2012 R3 solution demonstration VMs available from Partnersource or Customersource. You should use the latest available; this book was written to use CU8, with the differences to CU7 (or prior) explained.

If you are a software developer, who has started developing in Dynamics AX 2012 or an experienced software engineer migrating from an earlier version of Dynamics AX, this book is an ideal tutorial to help you make the most of this advanced technology. This book is also useful if you are a technical solution architect or technical consultant as it provides a deeper insight into the technology behind the solution.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "In our example, we will use 6015GettingStarted as the project name."

A block of code is set as follows:

public Common resolveReference(FormReferenceControl
                                           _formReferenceControl)
{
    Common category;
    EcoResCategoryHierarchy     hierarchy;
    EcoResCategoryHierarchyRole role;

    select firstonly * from hierarchy
        join role
            where hierarchy.RecId == role.CategoryHierarchy
               && role.NamedCategoryHierarchyRole ==
                  EcoResCategoryNamedHierarchyRole::Procurement;

    category = EcoResCategory::resolveCategoryHierarchy(
                               _formReferenceControl, hierarchy);

    return category.RecId ? category : null;
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

public Common resolveReference(FormReferenceControl
                                           _formReferenceControl)
{
    Common category;
    EcoResCategoryHierarchy     hierarchy;
    EcoResCategoryHierarchyRole role;

    select firstonly * from hierarchy
        join role
            where hierarchy.RecId == role.CategoryHierarchy
               && role.NamedCategoryHierarchyRole ==
                  EcoResCategoryNamedHierarchyRole::Procurement;

    category = EcoResCategory::resolveCategoryHierarchy(
                               _formReferenceControl, hierarchy);

    return category.RecId ? category : null;
}

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Press OK."

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