Staying on top of things - AX 2009 hot fixes

To be honest, I find it very hard to keep track of the available hot fixes (and cumulative rollup packages). By very hard, I'm mostly thinking about the time spent on 1) searching for possible hot fixes and 2) if one possible related hot fix is found, understanding what the hot fix actually solves.

Partnersource (or Customersource) is the primary source for this kind of information by searching the Knowledge base. Maybe it's only me, but I would like a much more effecient tool and much more detailed information about the individual hot fixes to keep our customers happy and of course spend as little time as possible on this activity. The real trouble arises when you find KB number without a published KB article. What do to in these situations? The answer is to ask for unpublished information through your support channel and hereby allocating even more time and resources.

So people; take the opportunity to vote by answering the recently published poll on the right hand side in this blog.

I promise to share the results with Microsoft.

Bottom line is that it's all about quality of the software by easily providing current information about available hot fixes to the partners (and customers).

Debugging Batch Jobs

We have a hard time getting the AX 2009 debugger to work when breakpoints are set in code executing in Batch Jobs. Microsoft has described this in several documents without any special requirements, but we are unable to get the debugger to work as expected. All settings are correct in the server configuration and in the client when the breakpoint is defined. We have also tried to use the keywork breakpoint in the code without any difference. It seems like the debugger has a hard time attaching to the process. We have tried this in several environments and solutions, and in different combinations, and basically we are stucked.

The fundamental changes in the Batch Framework requires more debugging than ever due to the increased complexity inherited from the changes around impersonation (RunAs) and the prmiary tool in this situation is in fact the debugger.

We have also checked with several other sources and they have done the same experience.

All experience around this issue is highly welcome.

Update 2009/04/03:

Microsoft has confirmed that they have received a problem report (4652) for this issue, but no solution or fix is available yet. The problem was reported in January 2009.