Doens.be

Me and some of my colleagues are currently working with a customer on a Ax 2009 SP1 RU4. The other day we came to the conclusion that the modified methods on fields in a form suddenly disappeared. I know, you should write as less as possible code on a form, but sometimes there is no way around this.

After some research we found a reproduction how these methods suddenly disappeared:

1. Go tot the AOT and chose a form
2. Open the [FORM] -> Data Sources -> [TABLE] -> Fields -> [A FIELD] -node
3. Add a method (for example the modified-method)
4. Save your form
5. Go to the properties of the table in the datasource
6. Place your cursor in the table property (properties window)
7. Push ENTER

The result is that the table will be reloaded in the form and all methods you created on the fields will be gone. So here you have another reason why you shouldn’t write lots of code on your forms. You can only lose it by accident.

I was using the postload method of the HRMBenefitType-table to fill the description-field with language-sensitive description (from LanguageTxt). This works fine when I view the record, but not when I use a lookup.

I’ve put a break-point on my postload method and noticed the recId (this.recid of the HRMBenefitType table). This is always the 101090. When I check this in the tablebrowser, this does not match the actual RecId valule.
I checked the SQL-trace-log and noticed the following instruction:

SELECT A.HRMBENEFITTYPEID,A.DESCRIPTION,A.RECVERSION,101090 FROM HRMBENEFITTYPE A WHERE (DATAAREAID=?) ORDER BY A.DATAAREAID,A.HRMBENEFITTYPEID OPTION(FAST 1)

The solution to this problem is simple. Just change the CacheLookup property to EntireTable and the strange behaviour of the RecId-field stops.

While I was checking my previous Enterprise Portal titlebar issue, me and my colleagues found a second bug. When you use a single quote (‘) in the PageTitle, the name of the Page Defenition object is displayed instead of the actual label with the singel quote. We couldn’t find a solution yet, but we’re still looking.

Anyone any idea?

When you modify the PageTitle property of a new Page Definition to a label with a ‘special’ character in it. You will see that the title is not rendered well. For example when you use a é it will be rendered as &#233. I logged this case with Microsoft and for the moment there is no fix for this issue, but they suggested a simple workaround.

Workaround:
When you edit your page in Sharepoint, you can remove the ‘Dynamics Page Title Web Part’ and replace it by the old ‘Page Title Web Part’

Explanation:
The reason why there are two Web Parts is mainly the “Page Title Web Part” is the old Web Framework (Dynamics AX 4.0) – and rendering takes part in X++ code while “Dynamics Page Title Web Part” is implemented completely in C#.

(Source: Microsoft)

Have you ever experienced the following symptoms in the Enterprise Portal:

• click on a date picker (the date picker is shown)
• click outside the date picker (the date picker is hidden)
• finally, you re-click on the date picker

Result: you see the message ‘Loading data’ and a ‘error on page’ message appears in the bottom of your browser.

When you open the error you will see a similar error:

Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.2; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Timestamp: Thu, 18 Jun 2010 06:00:00 UTC

Message: Sys.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.

Parameter name: panelsDeleting[0]

Line: 4723

Char: 21

Code: 0

URI: http://dynamicsax/ScriptResource.axd?d=5kX_0LN0u7mwWn790LXsbY7Ctv1Hcwgr-zXRCNUAi2zkRoHYg1N1jlEUavJPzNwiZYTQiJ3dlxfzGp0UsvQxuKxp2przuGOLv2smzEfpZ-A1&t=ffffffff9b6540a0

Solution:
In the web.config file you will probably find a similar line: <compilation batch=”false” debug=”true“>. When you change the debug parameter to false (<compilation batch=”false” debug=”false“>) and execute a iisreset, this issue is solved. You will typically find this issue only in DEV-environments because debug should be turned off in a live environment.
Unfortunately Microsoft won’t create a Hotfix for Ax 2009 to solve this issue permanent. They ported the issue to Ax 6.0 and in the mean time we’ll have to use the work-around.

In this post I will talk about some Ax kernel tables that are automatically created after the setup at the first run of Ax. They are typically company independent (no DataAreaId) and contain some valuable information about AX.

You can find the tables I wil discuss under the AOT –> System Documentation –> Tables.

• AccessRightsList : This table is used to manage the authorization of the usergroups in Ax (Be carefull). The most important fields in this table are:
  • GroupId : Usergroup (UserGroupInfo)
  • RecordType : Type of accessRights Table, securityKey
  • Id : Internal Id of the object on witch access rights have been defined
  • AccessType: Granted access rights (No Access, Read, Change, Add, Full Control)
  • …
• CompanyDomainList : This table contains relation between companies and domains.
• Common : The is the table that describes all other tables. It conains some important fields that return in all other tables. For example RecId, TableId, CreatedDateTime, …
• DataArea : This table contains data about created companies.
  Important fields:
  • Id : Company Id
  • Name
  • IsVirtual : Defines if the company is real (0) or Virtual (1). You often use this while looping trough companies with changecompany.
  • …
• DataBaseLog : This table contains data about which tables and events to log.
• DomainInfo : Table that contains info about the domains you have defined.

It is not easy to find info about these tables, but I hop this helps you all a bit.

Did you ever have trouble with the performance of your batch-job? Well maybe this small trick can shorten the time your batch runs.

The big idea: Try to split up your gigantic batch in smaller pieces. Launch a batchjob that produces many smaller batchjobs (tasks) that can handle a subset of the data you need to process. For example you can create a batch that creates a batch with sub-tasks for each company.

How do you plan a batch from code?

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BatchHeader batHeader;
BatchInfo batInfo;
TstRunBase rbbTask;
;
rbbTask = TstMyBatch::construct();
batInfo = rbbTask.batchInfo();
batInfo.parmCaption("MyBatch");
batInfo.parmGroupId("");
batHeader = BatchHeader::construct();
batHeader.addTask(rbbTask);
batHeader.save();
info(batInfo.parmCaption());

You can download a quick example I made. This is a job you can schedule and it will produce a new Batch job with a task for each company when you don’t select a company while shedualing (Class_TstRunBase.xpo). I hope this can help you.

Schedule the batch:

The result:

When you want to construct a query-object that contains OR-conditions, you can construct something like this:

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queryBuildRange.value(strFmt('((%1 == %2) || ((%1 == %3) && (%4 == "%5")))',
                    fieldStr(InventTable, ItemType),
                    any2int(ItemType::Service),
                    any2int(ItemType::Item),
                    fieldStr(InventTable, ProjCategoryId),
                    queryValue("Spares")));

(you can find more info on Axaptapedia: Expressions in query ranges)

Now there is a limitation to this way of working. When the generated string in the queryBuildRange.value is longer than 250 characters (the length of the range EDT), Ax cuts the generated string off when you open the ‘modify query’ dialog. I have tried to enlarging the EDT, but is not a good solution. The error does not occure when you open the ‘modify query’ dialog, but it occures when you close it.
A small (but limited) work-around could be to make the name of the datasources on the form/report where you want to apply this trick smaller. I hope to find a better solution, but this does the trick for now.

How do you execute code when a Configuration key is enabled?
It is pritty easy. Ax x++ has a build-in function ‘isConfigurationKeyEnabled’, witch you can use to check a configuration key.

Small example:

if (isConfigurationKeyEnabled(configurationkeynum(AIF)))
{
    // Do something...
}

When you want a list of all the mandatory field on table X, yould check all the properties on the table fields, or you could be lazy and write a small job that does the trick for you. Just replace TableId with your tablenum.

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static void CheckMandatoryFieldsOnTable(Args _args)
{
    DictTable dictTable;
    DictField dictField;
    int i;
    TableId tableId = tablenum(custtable);
    ;
    dictTable = new DictTable(tableId);
    for (i=1 ; i<=dictTable.fieldCnt() ; i++)
    {
        dictField = new DictField(tableId, dictTable.fieldCnt2Id(i));
        if (dictField.mandatory())
        {
            info(dictField.name());
        }
    }
}