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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Dynamics AX 2012 is a modern ERP solution from Microsoft that is targeted at the mid-and-high-level organizations. It is seeing an increased rate of adoption due to its tighter integration with the Microsoft technology stack and the flexibility it offers.
"Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Reporting Cookbook" focuses mainly on the reporting aspects of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Reports play a very central role in an ERP system being accessible to customers, vendors, top management and the shop floor. Every ERP implementation includes reporting changes as companies try to refit the reports to their standards and processes. As a Dynamics AX developer, reporting skills are a must-have and this book intends to make report development easier and simpler.
"Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Reporting Cookbook" deals with the SSRS-based reporting framework introduced with Dynamics AX 2012. It explains the reporting model in detail and offers instruction-led examples to help you understand the nuances involved in developing a report.
Throughout this book, you will learn how to build your own reports based on Queries, RDP, and different designs like Auto/Precision designs. You will also gain an understanding of the programmatic flow, which will help you develop reports with confidence. You will find different approaches to debug issues in your reports. The examples offered in this book can be readily used in your real-world scenarios. This book also offers strategies for new reports as well as for migrating your reports from the old reporting framework and development. Report designs like table, matrix, and charts have been discussed with examples. There are also tips, tools and references spread across the book that can hasten your report development process.
Overall, this book will guarantee you a deeper understanding of report development in Dynamics AX.
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Seitenzahl: 261
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Table of Contents
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Reporting Cookbook
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Reporting Cookbook
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
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First published: September 2013
Production Reference: 1170913
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-84968-772-0
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Cover Image by Prashant Timappa Shetty (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Kamalakannan Elangovan
Reviewers
Deepak Agarwal
Emad Mokhtar Habib
Umesh Pandit
Nasheet Ahmed Siddiqui
Saptha Wanniarachchi
Acquisition Editor
James Jones
Lead Technical Editor
Amey Varangaonkar
Technical Editors
Iram Malik
Manal Pednekar
Larissa Pinto
Project Coordinator
Apeksha Chitnis
Proofreader
Chris Smith
Indexer
Tejal R. Soni
Graphics
Ronak Dhruv
Production Coordinator
Manu Joseph
Cover Work
Manu Joseph
About the Author
Kamalakannan Elangovan has over eight years of development experience in Dynamics AX. He shares a passion for product development and has pioneered multiple ISV solutions on Dynamics AX. In the past he worked with Innovites to create the first multidimensional ISV solution for cable industries called "Innovites for cable". Building the solution from scratch, he has gained great insights into building, selling, and promoting the product among customers and partners in the Microsoft Ecosystem. You can learn more about him at http://about.me/casperkamal.
He is enthusiastic about sharing his learning with the community which led him to create one of the first few blogs for AX in 2006. It is currently available at http://kamalblogs.wordpress.com. He is active through twitter and the community, popularly by his pseudonym Casperkamal.
First of all, I would like to thank my wife Sangeetha and my little daughter Anu for their considerable support during the long hours I have put behind this book. I also want to apologize for the time I have stolen from them to invest in this book.
Thanks to Dhangar Naveen who has spent considerable hours working along with me in making the examples involved in each recipe.
Special thanks to the wonderful team at Packt who have patiently guided and supported me in making this book a reality.
Also, a big thanks to the readers of my blog, my fellow bloggers, and the Dynamics AX community who have directly and indirectly inspired me in this work.
This book is dedicated to Dick De Jong, who selflessly mentored and trained me in the art of software development.
About the Reviewers
Deepak Agarwal [B.Tech, MBA] is a Technical Consultant and has been working professionally on Dynamics AX since 2011. He is a team member of the very first AX project in the Manufacturing Domain. Though his strengths are rooted in X++ development, he is a highly regarded developer and has solid knowledge of technical aspects of Dynamics AX and X++ reporting.
Deepak blogs on Dynamics AX on his blog http://theaxapta.blogspot.in/.
A big thanks to my dear sister Khushbu Agarwal for her support and understanding of my long hours spent on this work.
Emad Mokhtar Habib is a passionate and an enthusiastic software developer, loves to learn new technologies, and is always seeking for the better to be the best. He has worked with many Microsoft partners. He is builds software to improve and help businesses. He runs a professional and technical blog, EmadMokhtar.com, and shares his thoughts and readings on Twitter and LinkedIn. He is working for Arabesque Group now and as a freelance Web Developer.
I want to thank my lovely wife who helped me in reviewing this book and always took care of me and my environment. I also want to thank my family and friends for motivating me and always pushing me to do my best.
Umesh Pandit is a Techno Functional Consultant with KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd. He has done Masters of Computer Applications with first division, having specialization in ERP from Ideal Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad.
He has worked with the top IT giants, such as Google India and Cap Gemini India. He has a deep understanding of ERP systems, such as Microsoft Dynamics AX. He has worked with different versions of Axapta, such as AX 3.0, AX 4.0, AX 5.0 (AX 2009), and AX 6.0 (AX 2012). He has a vast knowledge of Microsoft Technologies, such as SQL, CRM, TFS, Office, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, SSRS, SSAS, VSS, and VCS.
I would like to thank my friend Pramila, who encouraged me in this passion.
Nasheet Ahmed Siddiqui has studied Computer Science at the University of Karachi, Pakistan. He has over seven years of consulting experience, playing a variety of roles, including Software Engineer, Senior Software Engineer, Team lead, and Technical Consultant in Dynamics AX and Microsoft technologies.
He started working in 2006 for e-Creatorz, where he was developing and managing web applications. He started his Dynamics AX career with MazikGlobal (a subsidiary of Tyler Technology Ltd, U.S.A and Microsoft Corporation). He was the core developer in the development of the Dynamics AX 2012 and AX 2012 R2 features for Microsoft. He was directly involved with the Microsoft team to build the features for the AX 2012 and AX 2012 R2. Since 2012, he has been working for Othaim Markets, where he is responsible for the customizations, development, and implementation of new verticals (Property Management System and Maintenance Management System).
He has a solid knowledge of and skills in technical aspects of Dynamics AX 2009 and 2012. He is also working as a freelance Dynamics AX Technical Consultant. He has provided development services to many organizations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. He is also a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) for Dynamics AX Development and MorphX Solution Development.
He lives in Riyadh, KSA with his family. He is always happy to share useful AX development tricks on his blog (nasheet.wordpress.com). He can be contacted via LinkedIn at http://sa.linkedin.com/in/nasheet.
Saptha Wanniarachchi is a certified and experienced IT professional from Sri Lanka with quite extensive professional experience, in particular with Microsoft Dynamics-based Business Solutions. She is currently employed with SML, Sri Lanka, an international global branding and packaging company. She takes particular pride in her ability in infrastructure design and implementations for Microsoft Dynamics AX/NAV ERP Systems, system automation, and CRM solutions.
She has worked on the book:
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Preface
Reporting capabilities are the turn-key decision makers for choosing an ERP system. They cater from the low-level shop floor users to the board room members giving them the right insight into their business. That is one of the many reasons why report customizations dominate at customer implementations. Strengthening your reporting capabilities as a Developer not just makes you but also the users of your report confident than ever.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is a phenomenal release that took AX to a different breadth and depth. The SSRS has brought in huge thrust to the leap forward. This book has been written to help you understand and acquire the skills necessary to be good at Reporting based on SSRS.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Understanding and Creating Simple SSRS Reports, walks you through creating a basic report that introduces you to several basic features of Dynamics AX reports.
Chapter 2, Enhancing Your Report – Visualization and Interaction, focuses on further controlling and improving your report through parameters, data regions, expressions, new report and style templates.
Chapter 3, A Report Programming Model, helps you in understanding the programmatic model of the reporting framework inside AX and introduces you to programmatically modifying report UI and validations.
Chapter 4, Report Programming Model – RDP, delves into creating advanced reports using the new report data contract framework. It also details how to design reports through Precision Design.
Chapter 5, Integrating External Datasources, showcases how reports can be extended beyond AX to include other data sources, such as Cubes, XML Cloud Service, or through the integrations framework.
Chapter 6, Beyond Tabular Reports, dives in to using the other types of report formats, such as chart and matrix reports. It further details the use of other interesting controls, such as gauges, lists, and rectangles with clearly drafted examples.
Chapter 7, Upgrading and Analyzing Reports, shows you the approach to adopt when moving reports from MorphX-based reports to SSRS and discusses several repeated customization patterns in reports.
Chapter 8, Troubleshooting and Other Advanced Recipes, is a collection of assorted topics that can be applied to your SSRS reports, such as deploying through your code, using Enum provider and localization of reports. This chapter also introduces you to the log viewer through which you can analyze and identify report usage, report logs, and more.
Appendix, Introduction to SSRS, will help you run through the basic architecture of AX SSRS, followed by a brief introduction to different reporting components and the comparative advantage over the legacy reporting system from the previous releases of Dynamics AX.
What you need for this book
To practice the content in this book, you need the following software:
Alternatively, you can use the Virtual Image available for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012/AX 2012 R2 through Microsoft Learning Download Center.
Who this book is for
This book aims at IT administrators looking to get their hands on to develop their own reports for their internal demands and for X++ developers who want to deepen their understanding of SSRS reports.
This book requires some basic knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, X++, and MorphX. Some examples are based on C# and .NET. However, they are not must to read this book.
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Chapter 1. Understanding and Creating Simple SSRS Reports
This chapter will cover the following topics:
Introduction
Reports are the key to any business process. A successful ERP implementation is gauged by the efficient reports that can be generated through the data present in the system. Reports are introspective tools that help top-level business users to asses the condition of their business and help them make critical decisions.
This chapter will help you understand the development artifacts related to reports development, by designing a simple report which is broken down into smaller recipes. We will design a report that is applied with simple formatting capabilities and then deployed to the server to make it available for the end users, after which it is made accessible inside the rich client.
Reporting overview
Dynamics AX 2012 has extensive reporting capabilities like Excel, Word, PowerPivot, Management Reporter, and most importantly the SSRS reports. While there are many methodologies to generate reports, SSRS remains the prominent way to generate analytical and transactional reports. SSRS reports were initially integrated in AX 2009 and today it has replaced the legacy reporting system with AX 2012.
Through the recipes in this chapter, we will build the released products report. The released products report will list all the released products under each item group. This report will use the query datasource to fetch data from Dynamics AX and subsequently create an auto design based report. This report will then be deployed to the reporting services and will be attached to a menu item in AX so that it can be displayed inside the rich client.
Using a query as a datasource in a report
A query is the simplest way to fetch data for a report. Queries are beneficial as they are reusable and are easy to design. This recipe will guide you in creating a query in the AOT with the necessary optimization for a report datasource. The later part will guide you through creating a Visual Studio project for report development and use the query created to create a report datasource.
Getting ready
To work through this recipe, AX 2012 or AX 2012 R2 rich client with developer permission is required.
How to do it...
You can use a query as a datasource in the report, as follows:
How it works...
Connecting VS to AX: When creating a new report project in Visual Studio, if there is no option such as Microsoft Dynamics AX then ensure that you have your reporting extensions installed. When you have multiple instances of Dynamics AX installed, the Visual Studio identifies the instance to connect from the client configuration. The active client configuration is used to establish the connection. The layer in which the report must be created is also fetched from the client configuration.
Metadata and data retrieval: With AX 2012, WCF-based system services have been introduced. This includes the metadata service, query service, and user session service. SSRS reporting extension uses the query and metadata services. The metadata service helps the report designer in Visual Studio to retrieve the metadata information of query, tables, and EDT while the query service is used to fetch the data.
Verify the query: In case of a complex query, a better approach would be validating the query before it is included in the report. Write a job in Dynamics AX that will use the query to retrieve the data and print the values to the infolog. This will help in nailing the problem when there is an issue with the report.
No Joins: The report supports multiple datasets but as in AX forms, these datasets cannot be joined and they remain independent.
Creating an auto design from a dataset
In this recipe, we will use the data set added in the previous recipe to create a simple auto design that will list all the items.
Getting ready
To develop reports using AX 2012 and AX 2012 R2, you need access to the rich client with development permission, a Visual Studio installation for report development, and the reporting extensions for Dynamics AX must be installed.
The SQL reporting services must be installed and running. You must have the permission to deploy the reports to the reporting server and must be able to access the reporting manager that lists all the reports in the system.
How to do it...
You can create an auto design from a dataset, as follows:
