Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 does a lot to simplify service deployment; not so much by reducing the number of concepts, but by gradually presenting these concepts to users when needed. This is immediately obvious when you look at the setup menu for services and AIF. When you navigate to System administration | Setup | Services and Application Integration Framework, you only see four options. The first two are the most important: inbound ports and outbound ports. These two types of ports are known as integration ports.
Integration ports provide a way to group services and manage them together. They have at least the following properties:
One or more service operations
A direction that is inbound or outbound
A category that is either basic or enhanced
An adapter
The address of the port
We will discuss these properties and others in detail.