How to develop with multiple developers on an Enterprise Portal (Ax2009) application

  • Article

Many partners asked if it would be possible to have just one Enterprise Portal Server (WSS3.0 or MOSS + EP components) for their EP-development as described in the following scheme:

image 

The answer is no. Theoretically it would be possible to have one EP-server where each developer would have it’s own Web site with a different AppPool. In this scenario it would be possible that each developer develops and debugs individually the .Net part (everything which isn’t related to the X++ code from Ax). 

But the problem will be the debugging of the X++ code on the AOS, since this can only be done  remotely in a console session and that would necessarily limiting the debugging of X++ code to one person.

The best way to organize the EP-development is that each EP-developer hat its own

  • SQL-Server
  • WSS 3.x or MOSS
  • AOS
  • Ax-Client
  • Visual Studio 2008

Sharing the source code can be done by different tools (Team Foundation Server, Team Server or Visual SourceSafe). The one I would prefer in small teams is SourceSafe because it’s very simple to install and use and well integrated into VS 2008.

A document how to integrate Visual SourceSafe (VSS) in the Ax 2009 development can be found here. Other whitepapers can be found here.

(Thank you Mey for your help on this subject)