The haunt for knowledge

This is a follow up of the post regarding RPC errors.

First step to obtain a basic understanding of how MSRPC works can be found here. Microsoft has implemented their own version of RPC that they call MSRPC. Wikipedia puts the MSRPC implementation into a historical perspective and relates it to the source spesification called Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) from the Open Software Foundation.

I haven't yet found any specific information about how the Client- and Server Stubs are implemented in the Dynamics AX 3-tier architecture, but I'll try to dig a little bit more into this.

In addition to this, Microsoft recently also have published some KB articles on Partnersource that throws some more light on the issue I initially was blogging about. I'll try to find the URL's and update this post with the direct links when I get the time.

Update 2009-02-18:

Valuable links

Technet Magazine (article written by Zubair Alexander)
MSDN (Error Codes 1700 - 3999)
Florian's Weblog

Approaching GO LIVE

For those of you that have read my prior posts regarding AX 2009 and AIF with the AX BizTalk adapter, we have been working with our first implementation since June 2008. Without going into the details, we are approaching GO LIVE and the latest configuration is done this week such as defining the final endpoints. We basically have a solution with a set of front line services (FTP) in the perimeter network and BizTalk Server 2006 R2 togheter with AX 2009 in the local network tied together with some middleware. Not revolutionary or innovative, but a simple, cost effective and robust solution based on proven technology.

The test results so far are good and we are ready to GO LIVE tying a lot of trading partners to the client. We will have sales ordres, purchase orders, packing slips and picking lists flowing, in addition to invoices in different shapes and flavors. First phase is roll out in one country and two additional roll out phases are planned for the next months. By roll out in this context, we talk about markets with a set of different trading partners for each market.

Stay tuned for general updates!

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 AIF BizTalk Adapter Configuration White Paper

Finally Microsoft has released a White paper explaining how to configure AIF together with the AX 2009 BizTalk adapter! You can find it here.

This documentation is clear and right to the point compared to the corresponding White paper for AX 4 that is all we have had available until now. It also touches the necessary batch jobs for supporting the out- and inbound message flow (async/sync).

Well done Microsoft; let's hope for more useful and formal documentation for AX 2009! This will avoid a lot of R&D activities and increase the quality of the product. We also need best practise documentation outside the scope of the compiler :-)

RPC errors

One of the areas I find a little bit hard to understand, is the RPC exceptions logged in the event log (application). This is of course specific to AX 4 and AX 2009, but in my opinion Microsoft has done a pore job explaining the prerequisites and relationship between the RPC errors logged as Information and Warnings in the event log.

Sample (AX 2009 on Windows Server 2008)

I have studied this somewhat, but I have never found a good solution to generalize into best practice when installing AX. I understand that something impacts the way a client calls a Remote Procedure being executed on the AOS, but I don’t have a real understanding of the possible reasons. It could be a number of factors ranging from authentication, x++ code/logic (run at property), network packets, time outs, network drivers etc. but I really miss some basic guidelines on how to account for this. Could it also be some registry settings/tweaks needed? If yes, Microsoft should in my opinion indeed help the partners to better understand the prerequisites since this is all about making AX operating without any disturbance and “hidden” issues.

My challenge to eventual readers is to share your experience and help defining a best practice for this area. I would happily share the result of a joint community effort on this blog. If anyone remember the old “Damgaard Technet”, I really miss a common channel for addressing technical issues that I think a lot of partners around the world are experiencing, I don’t understand why every partner must invest in a lot of R&D activities to solve these kind of issues especially since it’s often about not documented prerequisites!

So please donate your experiences as comments to this blog and I promise to compile a best practice that everyone can use to better avoid RPC issues. Since a lot of unpleasant spam occurs in blogs, I have to moderate your comments before publishing but anonymous comments are allowed so keep them coming.

Experiences with the AX BizTalk Adapter

We have now encountered our first issue with the AX 2009 BizTalk Adapter. I will try not to go into every detail, but instead focus on the principal guidelines.

#1 If you experience a warning in the eventlog (application), Event ID 110 on the BizTalk Server saying "An X++ exception has occurred. Unable to lock resource channel '<channel name>'" (see sample below), I would suggest to look at how you have defined channels, action policies, document services etc. with regards to what is defined in the different company accounts since this can in fact lead to conflicts. We first related this to installing AX 2009 SP1 since it was the only change recorded in the same time frame and we didn't see this while we worked with the RTM release. The solution was to clean up in the AIF configuration using the AX client, but the cause is at the time beeing not known (it could be SP1, but that's only a theory at the time beeing).
























Update 2008/12/17:
After looking into the details, I also noticed a change of the warning logged by BizTalk for the same issue. Sample of the warning logged initially (figure 1) and a new version of the same message (figure 2) is shown below. I guess that something changed in SP1 and that the problem can be related to a required reboot of the BizTalk Server after applying AX 2009 SP1 (not logged or notifyed by the installer).


#2 Disparsed documentation. The documentstion for AX 2009 is quite good for AIF configuration, but is's very sparse when you are looking for details about the configuration of the transport properties in BizTalk (Visual Studio). If you want to understand the difference between the various authentication types, you have to look up the corresponding documentation for AX 4. At least this was where I found the answers to my general questions.

Convergence 2008 in Copenhagen

After attending the annual Convergence conference for the first time, I feel even more energic about the future for AX and Microsoft is clearly ramping up the fight against SAP and Oracle. The product is ready to grow both horizontally and vertically (broader and deeper functionality) and Microsoft has done a lot with the product since they bought Navision back in 2002 (USD 1.55 billion in cash and share).

One good example is the Enterprise Portal that has been part of the product since version 2.x. In my opinion it's more a revolution than en evolution despite the fact that SharePoint was introduced as the framework in AX 4. The really big change is the introduction of the Role Centers and the rather bold ambition to build a true portal solution from the ERP perspective. And it's really about role tailored "Business Intelligence to everyone". Some deep changes in the runtime and a much better developer experience in the crossing between MorphX and Visual Studio, opens up for a lot of interesting possibilities. I really hope to get started with some serious implementations pretty soon, because I'm convinced that the Enterprise Portal framework will bring much value to the customers.

The second top news for me was the announcement of the AX Data Management framework (ADM). If you attended the conference and missed this session, you really missed one exiting and excellent session given by Mr. Sri Srinivasan! I attended 6 AX technical sessions, but this was by far the best one in every aspect. And what's it all about? Finally customers and partners will have a framework to clean up the database schema, to categorize the data and to move data out of the primary production database. This maybe doesn't seem like something important to most people, but if you think about customers running the product for 8-10 years doing every main upgrade, you will probably recognize the fact that not all changes in the database schema has been high quality. Combined with different developers not always (seldom?) paying attention to the impact of their adjustments on the database back end, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the database schema grows into a jungle of different objects with broad (many columns) and deep (many million rows) tables with a lot of indexes hurting the performance big time. The Data Management framework also addresses this dilemma. Add the fact that 5-10% percent of the tables contributes to 80-85% of the total database size and you probably see the need for some serious clean up work. The roadmap for the ADM consists of 3 phases starting with a stand alone toolset and ending as an integrated part of AX. Microsoft also said that they would utilize the management functionality in SQL Server even more in the future. The final area of functionality also covers index maintenance with alerts being raised on given fragmentation thresholds. So all in all rules for archiving fiscal years still making the figures available through SSRS and special forms in AX for handling online and archive data, should really sound like good news to both existing and new customers. And this is in my opinion another sign of Microsoft ramping up the battle against SAP and Oracle by filling the administration and management gap to lower the TCO. Studies and analysis of existing customers, was reported to give effects in the 40+% range and I find it hard to questioning this numbers after attending the session - Sri is clearly an expert within this topic.

The last of my top 3 take a ways, was actually not related to AX and technology, but it was taken from the Business Leadership track. Session BL01 "A Macro view of Business Trends" was lead by Mr. Thomas Mendel from Forrester and supported by a representative from both HP - EDS and Microsoft. It was arranged like a prepared discussion session with Forrester giving their thoughts about what they considers to be the three megatrends that will change the IT business over the next years and ending up with the view as seen from HP - EDS and Microsoft. It was really both exiting and refreshing to listen to them and to get some confirmations about my own opinions. And the tree megatrends are Globalization 2.0, Invisible IT and how the consumer marked influences the Enterprise IT. A lot of dimensions and elements was brought into the discussion ranging from the CHINDIA effects via Cloud computing (did you know that Microsoft buys 10 000 servers every month to power their Azure platform from data centers all over the world?) to innovation driven from the consumer market. They all agreed on that the traditional office space was history and that the y generation will bring a totally new set of requirements to the Enterprise IT departments.

So all in all I returned with a great feeling abut the future for DAX and it will be very interesting to see how the battle on the ERP arena develops in the rather turbulent world economic situation we are facing right now. I think a lot of new businesses will discover that the Dynamics branding really is more than yet another market initiative. Finally the announcement of DAX SP1 didn't come as a suprise at all...

AX 2009 SP1

I recently got information telling that Service Pack 1 for AX 2009 is pretty close to RTM. I don't have any information about what it contains, but let's hope SSAS and SSRS for SQL Server 2008 is fully supported.

Maybe some more information will be published during the upcoming Convergence conference in Copenhagen (November 19 - 20).

In addition Microsoft has released at least one kernel hot fix for AX 2009 with reference to the "non existing" KB article 958328. It' still hard to find any information about this hot fix, but I know Microsoft is working on the KB article. As usual, hot fixes are provided directly from Premier Support (or other official Microsoft support channels), while the KB articles still are published on Partner and/or Customer Source. Kernel hot fixes are distributed as a set of MSP files which also is a good thing as I see it.

With this said, our experience so far has been pretty good and the quality of the RTM release seems to be better that 80/20 (we haven't yet experienced any big issues except for the technical issues described in an earlier post). So at this stage and after working with the release for almost 5 months, it looks as a big step in the right direction. We are still working with AIF and the BizTalk adapter, and except for some minor issues, we have been able to proceed as planned on our current project deliveries.