Monday 23 December 2013

Deploy AX 2012 default SSRS Issue


ISSUE: 


The deployment was aborted. You do not have privileges to deploy to server: XXXXX-01. For deployment, you must have administrative rights to the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) server. Contact your administrator to deploy.



RESOLUTION: 

Skip the reports from the admin check. we have to use the 
"SkipReportServerAdminCheck"command in publish AXReport comand line.  

Command will be:

Publish-AXReport -ReportName * -SkipReportServerAdminCheck

Thursday 4 July 2013

Test Data Transfer Tool for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

Test Data Transfer Tool for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012



Reference: 
technet.microsoft.com and other sources


Microsoft has released the beta version of Test Data Transfer Tool for Dynamics AX 2012. Which is applies to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Feature Pack and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

 This tool is a command-line tool that exports data from a Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 transaction database in a production or non-production environment. The tool also imports data into a Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 business database in a non-production environment. The non-production environment can be either a development or test environment. Microsoft strongly recommends not use this tool to import data into a production environment.

 The Test Data Transfer Tool (beta) is a powerful tool for importing and exporting data. The test data transfer tool is useful when we required to import large set of data into other environment (Non production), move data in different environments with similar customization's and when data version is required. You must run the tool directly from the system that is hosting the database during import.

To use this tool you should have prior knowledge on SQL databases. To perform the activity using this tool you should be a database administrator or a developer who has experience and also have permission to read from or write directly to the Microsoft Dynamics AX database that you are working with, and to execute applications directly on the computer that is hosting the database. Before performing this activity you need to take the backup of source and destination databases.

Each and every operation that works with data has risks and also make sure that you understand which conditions are logged as errors during import. For example, you might try to import data for a table or column that does not exist in the target database. This attempt is not treated as an error by the tool, because the tool is designed to work seamlessly when the source and target databases have a different set of tables.

The Test Data Transfer Tool (beta) is available from the InformationSource Services download page.





Benefits:

The Test Data Transfer Tool (beta) uses the Microsoft SQL Server bulk copy tool (bcp). The Test Data Transfer Tool provides the following key benefits that other methods for importing and exporting Microsoft Dynamics AX data do not provide:
  • You can export or import data when an AOS instance is not running.
  • You can export or import Microsoft Dynamics AX data more quickly compared to other methods.
  • Only minimal changes are made to the data that you import. This feature helps guarantee that the data is stable over time. For example, the tool never renumbers RecIDs.
  • The data file format is text-based. Therefore, the data can be compared with earlier versions and stored in a version control system.
  • The data file format is a standard format that is produced by bcp.

The Test Data Transfer Tool (beta) adds the following features that work with bcp. These features make bcp an appropriate tool for managing data for Microsoft Dynamics AX.
  • Exported data can be filtered. Therefore, specified tables, columns, or rows can be easily excluded from the export.
  • Differences between builds of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 are found and corrected. These differences often occur during development. Because of this feature, data can often be imported without user intervention, even when the table definitions have changed. For example, tables or fields that have been renamed do not prevent import.
  • Entity IDs, such as table IDs, class IDs, and extended data type IDs, are updated to match the IDs of the target system.
  • The tool reads and correctly updates the SYSTEMSEQUENCES table.

Limitations:

  • The Test Data Transfer Tool (beta) does not make sure that data that you export is complete or coherent. However, the tool does export any data that you ask it to export.
  • The tool does not make sure that data that you import produces a complete or coherent database. However, the tool does import any data that you ask it to import.

The Test Data Transfer Tool (beta) imports and exports the data as-is. In some cases, you might exclude tables or records from either import or export. Nevertheless, the tool does not make sure that the data is complete or coherent when other tables contain references to excluded tables or records. Therefore, after import and export, you must make sure that the data that you are importing or exporting is coherent.



Saturday 8 June 2013

Tools for monitoring performance in AX 2012


 “Good performance requires good and continuous monitoring. If you find problematic processes early, you can optimize them without significantly affecting your end users. Remember that performance tuning is an iterative process. Often, you must complete more than one round of tuning to achieve the maximum improvement in performance.” - Microsoft Tech Net,  May 29, 2012

Microsoft recommend the following tools for monitoring the performance of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

1. Performance Monitor
Performance Monitor is the basic tool for obtaining an overview of performance. You can review the CPU, disk, and memory counters to find performance issues. After you have identified a time frame during which your system may have experienced performance problems, you can add more specific counters to understand the problem in more detail.

Performance Monitor is a simple yet powerful visualization tool for viewing performance data, both in real time and from log files. With it, you can examine performance data in a graph, histogram, or report.

Membership in the local Performance Log Users group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

To start Performance Monitor

1.     Click Start, click in the Start Search box, type perfmon, and press ENTER.
2.     In the navigation tree, expand Monitoring Tools, and then click Performance Monitor. You can also use Performance Monitor to view real-time performance data on a remote computer. Membership in the target computer's Performance Log Users group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

To connect to a remote computer with Performance Monitor

1.     Start Performance Monitor.
2.     In the navigation tree, right-click Reliability and Performance, and then click Connect to another computer.
3.     In the Select Computer dialog box, type the name of the computer you want to monitor, or click Browse to select it from a list.
4.     Click OK.

For more details, follow the below links:


2. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Trace Parser

Trace Parser ships with Microsoft Dynamics AX. Trace Parser consolidates information from multiple sources, such as remote procedure calls (RPCs) and Microsoft SQL Server, to provide an integrated view of application performance at run time.


o    Tracing Cockpit Form



3. Performance Analyzer for Microsoft Dynamics AX (DynamicsPerf)
DynamicsPerf can be used to collect information from Microsoft Dynamics AX and SQL Server. DynamicsPerf consists of a database and a collection of scripts that collect information from SQL Server and Microsoft Dynamics AX. Based on this information, you can find issues such as expensive queries and locking/blocking. When you have gained experience, you can also use this tool to find inefficient code or business processes.


4. System Center Operations Manager Monitoring Pack for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012

The Monitoring Pack can be used to monitor your system. The Monitoring Pack can automatically discover the servers in your environment, monitor server availability, and find violations of setup best practices.

5. Microsoft Visual Studio Profiling Tools 
The Visual Studio Profiling Tools help you identify performance issues in source code and compare the performance of possible solutions. For more information, see the following resources:


6. Intelligent Data Management Framework for Microsoft Dynamics AX

Intelligent Data Management Framework (IDMF) provides functionality that resembles the functionality of DynamicsPerf, and also includes a user interface. IDMF also provides tools for activities that are related to data management, such as archiving and purging.























IDMF Screenshots: 








7. Performance Analyzer for Dynamics

Performance Analyzer 1.0 for Microsoft Dynamics is the tool used by Microsoft Dynamics support, Premier Field Engineers, and product team members to diagnose performance issues with Dynamics products.  The following is a step-by-step guide to installing this tool set on your SQL Server environment.

This tool is delivered as a SQL Server solution file and can be downloaded from http://code.msdn.com/dynamicsperf.  Once the file is unzipped the solution can be opened from within SQL Server Management Studio.

On the Menu, click File | Open | Project Solution



Choose the Performance Analyzer 1.0 for Microsoft Dynamics Solution file




To view the Solution Explorer in SQL Server Management Studio, click View | Solution Explorer or Ctrl - ALT-L.



The next step in deploying the tool is creating the database and the objects.  In Solution Explorer, on the right hand side, select CreateDynamicsPerfDB.sql query.



This script will create a database called DynamicsPerf in the default location.  It is initially 500Mb for the data file and 100Mb for the Transaction Log file for this database.  Each data collection is approximately 500Mb to 1 GB in size.  This varies widely depending upon total system memory and how much activity is occurring.  To manage database size there is a job called DYNPERF_Capture_Stats_Purge.  This job by default will run once per day at 6PM and delete data older then 7 days old.  Adjusting the number of days to retain data in this job  is the method for controlling the database size of the DynamicsPerf database.

The next step is to create all of the database objects and SQL Jobs used by Performance Analyzer.  Select CreateDynamicsPerfObjects.sql query on the right hand side in Solution Explorer.



This script creates all of the Tables, Procedures, and SQL Jobs used by the tool in the DynamicsPerf database.  In order to do blocking analysis, the script will set a configuration option called "Blocked Processes Report" to five seconds.  (Setting up data gathering for blocking will be explained in another blog post.)  After running the create object script the results returned from this script should look as follows:




Performance Analyzer is designed to capture all Query and Index data for one database.  To make this easier to configure, all basic functionality to collect data has been provided in a set of SQL Jobs.  In order to do basic data capture, the SQL Job called DYNPERF_Capture_Stats must be edited to define which database to collect performance data on.



Either double click this job, or right click and select properties.  This should bring up the following dialog to edit the SQL job.




Click on the Steps page on the left hand side of this dialog


Click the Edit button to edit the single step in this job.


In the command of this job step, change the '<dbname>' to the name of the database to collect performance data from such as 'AX_Live'.  Click the 'Ok' button to save the changes.




At this point, basic data collection has been setup for Performance Analyzer .  By default data will be collected once per day at 5PM.  This is the default schedule for the DYNPERF_Capture_Stats  job, but you can edit it to find a time that better fits the data you're trying to collect.


Reference from : http://technet.microsoft.com/ and other MS materials... 

Thursday 30 May 2013

Bank Integration with AX 2012 (Electronic Payments)

Approach

This article provides the information about the Electronic Payment and the creation of bank files to make the payments has changed dramatically in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. 

Overview of payment generation by using AIF

The CustPaymentsService and VendPaymentsService services expose payment information for the AIF outbound processing service. These services are based on Microsoft Dynamics AX queries. The queries capture all the data that is required to generate electronic payment files for customers or vendors. Developers can modify the service, document, and data object classes by using the AIF document service wizard.

First, set up the AIF transforms and then export payment data that is defined by the queries. An XSL transform can be applied to this data to transform the AIF XML file to the payment file for a specified format.

For every payment format that we intend to generate by using AIF, we must have a corresponding XSLT file. This XSLT file is based on the format that is specified by the bank. Several XSLT files are provided with Microsoft Dynamics AX. However, we can create our own XSLT file by using a text editor or XML editor.
For payment files that are not in XML format, we must apply an outbound transform to convert the XML results to a flat file. Outbound transforms can be of any file type, such as binary or XSLT. When we apply the outbound transform to the XML file that is generated by AIF, the XML tags are removed and the payment file is created in the format that is required by the bank.

In addition to the master data, payment-specific data might be required for each file, depending on the requirements of the bank. This data can be associated with outbound ports, and can be defined in the Payment processing data form by the system administrator. Then, when users generate payments, the users can enter values in the fields.

The following Diagram shows the steps that are required to configure and use payment formats by using AIF services. 



Payment integration process flow:




In Microsoft Dynamics AX, we can use a service to create electronic payment files. Before we can use the service, we must configure an outbound integration port. Set up an outbound integration port for payments that use Application Integration Framework (AIF) and the payment format XSL transforms.
In this, we need to export an XML style sheet from the Application Object Tree (AOT), set up a batch job to generate XML files, and set up an outbound port for electronic payments. We have added an outbound transform, because of it’s a special XML format is required by the Banks that we are processing payments for.

Create a Directory to Export the XSLT file.



Select the file type as “XML Document” and the document in the created directory.




Create a Directory to Export the XSLT file


Click the View -> Payment processing data button.


Click Area Page node: System administration -> Setup -> Services and Application Integration Framework -> Outbound ports.


Click the Outbound pipelines button-> Configure button


Click the Import XSLT button and provide XSL payment file.


Click the View button to view the uploaded XSL.


Click the Outbound transforms button.


Click the Manage transforms button.

Create transformation of type XSL and click the Load button and select transformation XSL.

Close manage transformation and select the newly created transformation under outbound transformation form.


Click the Close toolbar button and Transforms form.

Change the adapter to FTP adapter and provide the FTP path.






Accounts payable -> Journals -> Payments -> Payment journal.

A batch job runs periodically. We must set up a batch job that automatically processes documents that are created by the service.
  1. Log on to Microsoft Dynamics AX as an administrator.
  2. Switch to the legal entity that users will generate payments from.
  3. Click System administration > Inquiries > Batch jobs > Batch jobs.
  4. Press CTRL+N to create a batch job.
  5. In the Job description field, enter a description.
  6. Save the batch job.
  7. Click View tasks.
  8. Create the following tasks.
Task description
Company accounts
Class name
1
Select the legal entity that users will generate payments from.
AIFGatewaySendService
2
Select the legal entity that users will generate payments from.
AIFOutboundProcessingService
  1. Close the Batch tasks form.
  2. In the Batch job form, select the batch that we created in steps 4 and 5, and then click Recurrence.
  3. In the Recurring pattern field group, select Minutes, and then enter the number of minutes in the Count field. For example, we might enter 1 to process payment files every one minute.
  4. Click OK to close the Recurrence form.
  5. In the Batch job form, select the batch that we created in steps 4 and 5, and then click Functions > Change status.
  6. Select Waiting.
  7. Close the Batch job form.



Accounts payable -> Journals -> Payments -> Payment journal.

This Document is based on the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Credit Transfer xslt example as supplied by Microsoft.



Click the Lines button.



 Click the Functions -> Generate payments menu button.



Select “Export payment using service” and select the new “Payment format.”


Click on OK.

Modify the “Payment processing data” of required and then click on “OK.”
Then, AIF services are running in batch, the document will be processed and exported to the specified FTP folder.


Happy Daxing... :)