Microsoft at CeBIT 2013 (Hannover)

Hi again! Last saturday I visited for first time the trade show CeBIT in Hannover (Germany) and I want to give my short impressions about what I have seem there.

Our company MODUS Consult AG was there as Microsoft Partner and I hope you where there to look for our services with Microsoft Dynamics Ax, Dynamics Nav, Qlikview BI or ELO Document Management Software between others.

Lots of germans companies are using or moving to Microsoft Dynamics ERP products (Nav/Ax). In fact Dynamics Ax 2012 is already finally considered a real alternative to SAP by bigger german companies and not only for the middle sized.

For my experience german companies are very cautious with their ERP selection so this demostrate the confidence of the market in the Microsoft ERP products.


But in this post I am not going to talk to much about about Microsoft Dynamics Ax but on the surrounding products that Microsoft have recently delivered or is going to deliver. That is Windows 8, Windows Mobile 8, Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 and Windows Azure.

Much have been written about the decadence of Microsoft in the Internet/Mobile/Cloud era but Microsoft have reacted quite well to this wave that was comming. Microsoft have reacted and now is time, for us, as professionals to react as well and use this technology that Microsoft put in our hands.

Windows 8

From my experience as IT Manager in Spain where I had to make the most with the less money possible I am not what we should call a technology geek. I like to use something that works the most time possible so I can save my company's money and time. So I was not really convinced about Windows 8 not even the version Windows RT.

Using the new Windows 8 in the Microsoft Surface Pro tablet is really a good experience and the keyboard is simply cool. I could imagine myself working in the train ICE to Berlin with this tablet. I actually own a Galaxy S Tablet and Microsoft Surface could be used both for working and pleasure and not only the last as I do with my actual tablet.

About Windows RT version tablet there is another story. It is cheaper but the operating system is quite limited. You can only install applications that come from the Windows Store and not normal Windows applications. That could be a limit. But on one of the sessions I have seem a really good use that this tablet can provide.

The fact that you can not install to much applications can make this device more secure and with the use of VDI (Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infraestructure) companies can provide a secure way to provide mobility to their workers. Users can use their normal applications on mobility but as nothing is installed in the device the security is less compromissed. This could be a second life to a device that seemed to be dying before being delivered to market.

 Windows Mobile 8

I am also a mobile developer since the J2ME era and I have developed some applications for general J2ME devices, Blackberry devices and lastly some general sites with JQuery Mobile. So I like to keep up to date with the last mobile technologies. I actually also have a Galaxy S android device and I was also not very much convinced about Windows Mobile 8 before playing with it. I had the opportunity to play with the latest models in the trade show and I was finaly convinced. It is a cool operating system and as I like to develop with .NET so I found this a really good platform. Blackberry new Z10 was also available on the trade show but it not attracted not too much attention so the mobile market remains between the 3 players Apple, Google and Microsoft. On the way Microsoft gave a second opportunity to Nokia.

 Microsoft Office 365

We are heading to the Cloud era and Office 365 is one of the steps of Microsoft in this area. Sooner or later almost everything would be on the Cloud so better that we start getting used to this. It is very cool to have your office documents available to work with from whatever device you have and from whatever place. One of the demostrations I could take place was a video conference between 2 tables using Lync and sharing and working with a sharepoint presentation.

You could try by yourself at Microsoft Office Website.

If you are still not prepared for the cloud Microsoft have released the Microsoft Office 2013 as installables as well.

Windows Azure

 I had the opportunity to attend a MSDN session about developing mobile application with Windows Azure. The cloud solution from Microsoft and I found really cool as easy you can create a new mobile applications on the cloud, setup its database and start coding it on Visual Studio to start producing functionality to your users. We are heading to the cloud world and even probably next versions of Dynamics Ax would be cloud based so better that we get used to the technology. Microsoft lets you try the technology for free and start coding in the cloud.  Here you can see an example video of how creating mobile applications with Windows Azure.

Developing Mobile Solutions with Windows Azure Part I (MSDN Channel9 video)

 Definitedly we are heading to the Cloud but for critical software as an ERP we have still questions to solve like where the data is, security, how I could recover my data if the provider goes bankrupt, etc.

Microsoft Sharepoint 2013

And last something about Sharepoint 2013. Also looks great. Microsoft have continuosly improved its Sharepoint products. I have worked with versions 2007 and 2010 and between both I have seem an improvement and this time Microsoft has also delivered a really good worked product. New features would be a more social intranet, a better workflow module and better mobility providing menues really touch oriented.


As we seen Microsoft have reacted energically in all the fronts with new products. We have also not mentioned SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012. Systems in which we are already working with our last Dynamics Ax 2012 R2 solutions. So there is a new of technology available and now we should start working and apply this technology in our companies or customers to start helping them to move to the new IT era that is just now here where information but also processes are not just on your computer but everywhere. It is indeed a very interesting time as IT professional.


That was all for today! For next time I have something really interesting on mind. Since some time I wanted to develop mobile solutions for Dynamics Ax using JQuery Mobile so what I will do is to create a small project using Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012, ASP.NET MVC 4 and JQuery Mobile. This will take some time and I will create a CodePlex project so everyone can take a look at the project and I will create several posts as the project advances so you will be able to see how this solution advances from concept to implementation :-)

Last a photo I took also on CeBIT about of one of the reasons one can have to move to germany. Where else you can drive a BMW at 200km/h (124mi/h) on the highway? :-) 

And believe me, it is not dangerous and quite pleasant!

 

DMF - Create a custom entity for importing ZipCodes

Data Migration Framework. Create a custom entity for importing ZipCodes

Hi again! This is the second post on my new blog about Dynamics Ax and as promised I will deliver something interesting. We will speak about the Data Migration Framework and in particular how we can import ZipCodes and its relate information (States, Counties and Cities) creating a custom entity for that purpose.

But first of all lets speak something about Germany. I moved here so I think some of you would find interesting my life and experiences here.

This is my first winter in Germany and although it was not very cold for what I expected it was in fact the darker winter in 43 years!

[Der Spiegel - Dark winter article ]

Basically I haven't seen the sun in 5 Months. But today it was pretty sunny! That I have to say.

Anyway, the spring is comming and I can now say that I survived the german winter. This is quite a thing for someone that comes from south Spain :-)  you only have to look below at the end of this post to know what I am talking about :-)

So let's speak about the Data Migration Framework.

As you should know the Data Migration Framework was released for Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012 (Actually in version Beta 2.0 and working also with SQL Server 2012 and Ax2012 R2) as a tool to help with the migration of data into Microsoft Dynamics Ax.


After looking how it works and how it looks like, we in our company have decided to use it in order to standardize our migration procedures and deliver better and more predictave results in our data migration phases.

Basically what the framework does is to take data from a data source (for example a CSV file) and copy the data on a staging table before the data is migrated to the final target table. We can make a mapping from source to staging and also a mapping between staging and target. Between staging and target we can also use functions that would be executed to convert the values or even execute some needed logic before the value is copied to target.


You can download the framework from the Information Source WebSite and there you will find also some documentation and even a ilustrative video about how to use the framework.

Installing the framework should be not problematic following the instructions of the documentation and with Beta 2.0 and Dynamics Ax 2012 R2 there is a small issue in which one of the classes of the framework tries to use a table with name CreditCardCustNumber that is not anymore in this version of Ax.

In my case I just commented the code that use this table because it was not relevant for me but in your case you will have to check in you come to this problem.

After installing the framework you will be able to start using it with some of the entities that are already delivered like customers, vendors, customer addresses, vendor addresses, open sales orders, ... you can find the entire list in the documentation or in the Target entities form in the Data Migration Framework Area Page.



In our case we want to import ZipCodes and we dont have an entity for that so we will have to create our own entity to create records in the table LogisticsAddressZipCode but also in LogisticsAddressState, LogisticsAddressCounty and LogisticsAddresssCity in case we have to.

To make that we will use the provided Wizard to create the needed AOT Objects. So we use the option Create a custom entity for migration. This will launch the wizard.



We are asked to which table we want to import data. We select LogisticsAddressZipCode.



On the next step we are presented the names of the entity table, query and class objects that will be created. We can change it but we leave as proposed.



The result is a project with all the objects created. But we still have some work to do because we want also to create records on the tables LogisticsAddressState, LogisticsAddressCounty and LogisticsAddresssCity. For that we will create methods that will be executed when the system takes the values of State, County and City from Staging table to Target table. These methods will check if the values of State, County or City exists. If not a record would be created on the corresponding table.



For each method we will check if the corresponding record exists and if not we will create the record. At the end we will return a container which contains the values that we want to be available for the target table.



We have also to modify the method getReturnFields of our entity class so we indicate for each method which value of the target table will be initialized with the result of the execution of the function.



We need also to modify the entity table and create a field group per each function we have created with the same name of the function. If not we would be not able to use our functions on the modify entity mapping form later.



On the Target entities form I can setup now my new target entity.



And we can modify the fields mapping between staging table and target table clicking on the button Modify target mapping. Below the Mapping details view where we can specify the detail of the mapping.



And below the Mapping visualization. There we can see that our new methods are used between staging and target. Looks cool eh?



Now we will have only to create a Processing group which uses our new target entity for ZipCodes and map a source file like the one you can see below to the staging table and we would be able to import, first the data to the staging table and later to the target table.




So this is an example of what is possible with Data Migration Framework. Which is still on version Beta 2.0 but seems really useful to create a quite professional data migration procedure for our ax projects.

To end up with this post I give you all some sun from Spain, photo taken in Aguilas (Murcia), place where I used to spend my free time before deciding to come to Germany. Nice isn't? :-)

Next week is celebrated here in Germany the biggest IT trade show in Europe CEBIT. I hope I have time to drive there and maybe I can deliver another post about my visit there ;-)

So see you all until the next time!