At first sight, the procedure to consume a service in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 might seem a bit complex, but once you've done it, you see how easy it really is. Using Visual Studio, you can take advantage of having control over how you create the reference. You can choose whether you want to use message contracts, reuse data types, and so on.

Support for different deployment options also means that it is easier than ever to use managed code. The assemblies are part of the model store and are deployed when needed, so no manual actions are needed to deploy them.

In the next chapter, we will take a closer look at the system services that are available to us. They are new to Microsoft Dynamics AX, so they are easily overlooked when planning for integration. However, because of their flexibility, it is worth considering using them.