Doens.be

Ilearned something new from my colleague Koen Van Hauwenhuyse. He showed me 2 extra querystring parameters you can add tot the portal URL so the content will be shown different.

The normal Url of the page: http://***/TSTReplacement.aspx?WCMP=TST

The Url for the rolecenter-view of the same page: http://***/TSTReplacement.aspx?WCMP=TST&RUNONCLIENT=1

The Url for the same page without any navigation: http://***/TSTReplacement.aspx?WCMP=TST&NONAV=1

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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 surfing on the web about Ax Best-Practices I found the following link on Packt Publishing. I think this is a verry good list of things a Ax developer should do while programming.

This article is a part of the book ‘Quality Assurance for Dynamics AX-Based ERP Solutions‘, maybe I’ll read it.

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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?

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.

Every Ax developer tries to group their code from one defect or one analysis in one project. Sometimes you try to maintain the AOT structure in that project through groups (don’t forget to set the property projectGroupType). What some developers don’t know is that project-groups have a property GroupMask. Here you can fill in a prefix or part of a word and Ax will automaticly search through the AOT for objects that match this GroupMask. This system will also automaticly maintain itself.

Step-By-Step:
Go to your project and change the GroupMask property of a Group

Now when you save this and look at your project you will see the following:

Conclusion: Ax searches the AOT looking for all objects that matches the ‘projectGroupType’ and the ‘groupMask’.

Tip: When you set the GroupMask-property to ‘Tutorial’, Ax will look for all tutorials in the AOT. I have made a export of the project-structure, so you can have this output quicker. You can download this here.

One of my colleagues (Koen Dedecker) was looking for a way to prevent user interaction with other forms while a certain dialog is shown. After some research he found the solution on the blog Dynamics AX tools and tutorials from Vanya Kashperuk. A few years ago (2007) he made a simple extension of the dialog class that makes this possible. You can find more information and download some code samples on http://kashperuk.blogspot.com/2007/06/3-dialog-extensions.html.

The trick is actually simple:

• Create a new variable of the type Boolean en the classDeclaration of the Dialog-class
• Create a public parm method for this new variable to get/set the value
• Extend the wait-method by placing the following code before the close-statement:

  dialogform.formRun().wait(this.parmShowModal());

Now when you make a new instance of the dialog class just set the value of the parmShowModal() to true. From now on this dialog will stay on top.

• When you declare a buffer of a record of temporary table type, the table does not contain any values.
• Memmory and filespace aren’t allocated for a temporary table till the first record is inserted. This means that you have to watch out for client/server problems.
  When the first record is inserted in a buffer on the client tier, the memory is allocated there. All actions (insert / update / delete) to this buffer will run trough that tier, so try to reduce round-trips and improve your performance.
• When you declare 2 different buffers of the same temporary table, they will both have a life of their own. To share the date between the tables use the setTmpData method.
  for example: tmpCommonBuffer1.setTmpData(tmpCommonBuffer2);
• You can’t (normally) set up logging on temporary tables.
• Use the method isTmp() to know if a record is temporary or not (true –> temporary, false –> phisical)

My opinion: Temporary tables are very useful and can help you to easily manipulate data you don’t need store permanently, but watch out where and how you use them.

Wel all know the small dialog that gives the user usefull information about what is happening in Ax. In this post I will tell u some more about this.

You can add information to the Infolog by calling:

• Infolog.add(…)
• info(…)
• warning(…) or checkfailed(…)
• error(…)
• You can add some structure in it by using setPrefix(…)
• Using the Proxy-class for the Enterprise Portal

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