Ax 4.0 Platform - a big leap forward...
It’s been more than a year now since AX 4.0 was released. The reception so far has been fantastic. Recently I came across a document listing some of the framework improvements that we did in Ax 4.0. This is not a comprehensive list and does not include the app enhancements. There are documents available in partner source/ customer source which lists all the AX 4.0 enhancements. I thought I can share this list in my blog as a quick ref to Ax 4.0 platform improvements.
Client
· Improved UI -- Outlook 11 look and feel - Familiar MS Office style UI and consistency with other MBS apps; reduce window clutter and better navigation
o Easier Navigation with Navigation Pane
o Improve content management
and organization with Favorites and Task Pane
o Reduce Window Clutter with Collapsible Navigation Pane and workspace
o Better personalization
o Familiar Office 11 style user interface
o Theme Support ( XP and Vista)
o Global Search
· Revamped Help System : obj: closer alignment with other MS products
o Based on chm files using standard help authoring tools & Help can now be dynamically updated post launch
EP
· Familiar SharePoint look and feel
· Built on Windows SharePoint Services / MOSS 2007
· Stateless Programming model for Scale Out scenarios
· Enhanced Authoring Experience
· Integrated collaboration services
· Web framework opened up to existing portals enabling easier integration
· Common Search
· Easier Customization / Personalization
· Why we did it
1. Aligned with Microsoft Portal strategy by building the portal based on SharePoint.
2. The technology stack moved from IIS 5.0/ ASP(script based) /BC COM to IIS 6.0/ASP.net/BC.net for better performance , reliability and scalability
3. Page Authoring and Customization using browser and FrontPage.
4. Leveraging SharePoint core capabilities such as content , collaboration , personalization and search inside Enterprise Portal
Reporting & BI
· Reporting Services integration in 4.0
· Out of the box support for Report Builder with perspectives
· End user ad-hoc reporting with Report Builder
· Support for SQL 2005 Analysis Server
· Why we did it
o Tighter integration with MS Stack
o Support end user ad-hoc reporting
Security
· Active Directory Integration (Single Sign On)
· Removed support for 2 Tier (3 Tier Only) – All access to DB through AOS
· Code Access Security for X++
· Encryption in Enterprise Portal
· Table Permission Framework
· Comprehensive SWI review and penetration testing done by 3rd party vendor
· New Batch Framework
· Restricted Write Access to AOT to developers & admins
· Improved Server API security (dangerous APIs)
· Why we did it?
1. To secure access to business critical information in AX , moved away from custom authentication to integrated windows authentication for the client , portal and BC.
2. Code Access Security for X++ classes to secure APIs and prevent unauthorized , unintended privilege to calling code
3. URL encryption in Enterprise Portal to prevent URL manipulation
Server
· Data Access
o Optimistic Concurrency Control(OCC)
§ Finer grained locking
o RecID increased to 64 bit and per table
o Improved Indexing
o Cursor Optimization
o Why we did it?
§ Support for larger amounts of Tx Data
§ Improved Performance
· Core Server
o Moved from proprietary transport protocol to RPC
o AOS moved to a Windows Service
o NLB based load balancing (in 4.0. We added our own load balancing in SP1 so now we don’t recommend NLB any longer)
o New Logging model
o Session info moved to database
o Why we did?
§ Robustness
§ Aligned better with MS Server technologies
§ Improved Perf
· Better administration – single form for managing /viewing all server/user sessions
Programmability
· AIF
o XML based, customizable document exchange
o Configurable platform for ready-to-use services
o Wizard for generation of custom services
o A2A and B2B integration through MSMQ, web services and BizTalk Server
o Extensible X++ framework
· .NET BC
· CLR Interop
· Why we did it?
o Better Application Integration
o Tighter Integration with .NET
Setup
· One click install
· Role based install
Alerts
· End users can create alert rules in Ax and receive notification through email or in Ax Client or Enterprise Portal
- Admin can Create, modify, and delete alert rules for individual Microsoft Dynamics AX users
- Admin Create alert rule templates to be used by End users
- Customizable email notification by defining HTML or Extensible Style Language (XSL) template that merges alert data into an e-mail message at runtime
Others
· Unicode enabled the application
· Many bugs fixed for high CPE