Slow performing SQL statements in AX – Update
There has been some compatibility improvements and fixes on SQL Server 2014 for the slow performing statements in AX job. The updated version can be accessed from the original article:
16 08, 2016
11 05, 2016
AX database tuning and maintenance – How to keep it healthy
It is very crucial for your environment to audit, evaluate, then carry out an AX database tuning and maintenance task regularly in order to keep Microsoft Dynamics AX in a good shape.
There are many areas which are frequently being overlooked by partners and customers, for which Bertrand from the Microsoft PFE team has written an excellent summary that you should read here:
Many of these configurations are very important to keep your environment healthy from day 1. Often overlooked settings include for example the Index fill factor. It causes fragmentation as records are getting created and updated in your database, resulting in slower statement execution times and even timeouts, which is very bad and has been discussed in this post:
If you’ve got very large DBs like we have, you could be safe with setting 90% then doing an index rebuild to not bloat your DB size by too much. Other than that the MS recommendation is between 80-95%.
Having the correct SQL Trace Flags are also equally important, you could read about them again on the PFE blog. We are running 1117, 1118, 1224, 2371 and 4199. Also it is recommended to use the dataAreaIdLiteral AX setting if you have a multi-company environment, to avoid parameter sniffing.
30 03, 2016
Table Delete actions in code compare window
I am sure all fellow developers have faced the frustrating problem of not being able to insert certain objects when importing an XPO or comparing different models, layers. Today I will show you how can you insert the Table Delete actions in code compare window for AX 2012 R3.
Modify \Classes\SysTreeNode\mergeInsertSubnode method in the AOT as per below:
14 03, 2016
Modified objects between two AX 2012 databases
In case if you were wondering what are the modified objects between two AX 2012 databases (renamed, or deleted entries based on OriginId), we could use the Linked Server feature of Microsoft SQL Server to find out.
Our scenario was an AX 2012 RTM Feature Pack installation that is being upgraded to R3 version, and we wanted to find out which objects have been renamed or removed (either DEL_ prefix, or complete deletion) between the two instances with my colleague, Peter Prokopecz.
The solution was to open SSMS and under Server Objects > Linked Servers add a connection for the other SQL instance, then we could use the queries below to find out which are the modified objects between two AX 2012 databases of any versions.
25 02, 2016
Technical Conference Day 2
As the day is passing by more details are being revealed on the Technical Conference break-out sessions. Here is a summary of the keynote and some topics for Solution architects and Developers:
- Various models will be available for deploying AX. Current version is the Ready-To-Web release, which is in line with Microsoft’s Cloud First strategy for brand new implementations. Later on Azure Private Cloud deployments will be the next step down the ladder, after which the On-premise deployments will follow. This needs to be synchronized with other technologies to be available, namely Windows Server 2016, SQL Server 2016 and Azure Stack on-prem
- The main goals with the Cloud First strategy are to offload responsibilities from Partners for infrastructure sizing and maintenance, application platform patching and seamless deployment of new functionality, and lastly sealing down modules to make it more configuration-based rather than doing bespoke changes to go for an SaaS structure
- Form styles are now referred as Patterns and they became mandatory. The number of pattern templates have been greatly increased, and they fall into the categories of Form Pattern (top level) and Subpattern (lower levels). Special cases are supported as Custom Patterns, however the performance, responsiveness and upgradeability are up to the implementor
- A developer box now requires minimum 16 GB of RAM due to the highly optimized compiler (xppc), which can do a full compilation including cross-reference updates in 9 minutes on a VM which meets the system requirements
- The X++ Language Toolkit (XLNT) is completely rewritten in C#, and produces native MSIL managed code that executes server-side. The source code is now stored in a file structure using XML format
- Ignorelist could be used to partly skip code with problems during the migration, to be able to generate the assembly for the pieces that can compile and are ready for testing
- Packages/models are now making the traditional layering obsolete, we could think of it like there are unlimited number of layers
- The overlayed code only stores a differential delta compared to the model below, and layering is now much granular (i.e. Form datasources are no longer a single object that we cannot even compare)
- Code changed on the Application suite or any other models flag them for code conflict, which we could merge in Visual Studio very intuitively
- xRef is now sitting in it’s own database
- Different Best Practice rules could be applied per model, and they could also be extended with our own rules
- A lot of interesting features came in from the .Net framework, just to name a few: variable declaration without type using VAR keyword, CONST and READONLY keywords for static variables, access restrictions on variables using PUBLIC/PRIVATE/PROTECTED, THIS.method/variable calls for clarifying scope, TRY-CATCH-FINALLY, USING statements and clauses, _Extension methods, code-based and declarative event handlers
Many points above are already available on the AX wiki, here is an overview for the development environment feature changes:
https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/using-new-x-and-debugger-features-in-ax7/