With each new release of Microsoft Dynamics AX, new features for developers are added. These features range from wizards that are used to automate repetitive development tasks to support for new technologies such as WCF. From a developer's perspective, you might think that Microsoft is really generous to provide us with all these cool features. This is true to a certain extent, but providing developers with tools can never be an end goal. In reality, these features are added to facilitate new functionalities in Microsoft Dynamics AX.

This is also true for a new set of services that are supported in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 known as system services. These services are WCF services that allow you to access system information; for example, they are used in the Excel add-in.

This doesn't mean you can't use them in your solutions. On the contrary, in this chapter, we will demonstrate how you can use these services to build your applications.

The following topics will...