My report from the technical conference.

 

And many, many thanks to those who retweet these blogs! It’s much appreciated. I am now pushing to complete this… look for this to be wrapped up by Monday morning.

 

I went to Mining the metadata and authoring X++ best practice rules in Microsoft Dynamics AX with Peter Villadsen, program manager.

 

It was full (of course) but I refused to miss another Villadsen breakout session, so sat on the floor. I started a trend and had lots of company.

 

Session Objectives and Takeaways

• Session Objective(s)
  • Learn about the role of metadata in Dynamics AX7 and how to leverage its value
  • Understand the extensibility story for the new X++ compiler
  • Understand how to write add ins into Visual Studio to provide new functionality
• The metadata is more pervasive and more useful than ever
• The AX development environment can be extended
• It is possible to extend the compiler easily

 

Dynamics AX Metadata

• The Dynamics AX environment is based on metadata
• Metadata is now stored in XML files in the file system, not in a database.
• Everything is open; there are no “blobs”.
• The XML files are the unit of Source Control.
• The metadata access does not depend on server

 

 

XML Metadata files

Showed them on the file system

Application explorer is a read-only view

Metadata access

Consuming metadata

• There are several ways of consuming metadata in Dynamics AX7:
  • Using raw System XML APIs
  • Using the dict* classes from X++
  • Using the automation API from Visual Studio add-ins
  • Using managed APIs: (compile time, general)
  • Using the OData service

 

Consuming metadata as XML

• You saw the XML metadata stored in files by package, model, and kind
• It is easy to do sweeps of these files using XML APIs in either X++ or C#.
• Pros:
  • XML can be accessed on any device, everywhere
  • Easy to search using LINQ or XPATH
• Cons:
  • It is not type safe
  • It is slightly clunky

 

 

Demo

 

 

Application note: large scale query map of metadata files. Used an open source edition, ran even faster

 

Using the dict* classes

• The dict* classes from AX6 were re-implemented on top of the new metadata API
• They support existing code, but new metadata is now leveraged through these APIs
• The TreeNode API is available too for some cases (except for writing)
• Pros:
  • Compatibility
  • Easily used from X++
• Cons:
  • A little kludgy
  • Inelegant but they do work

 

 

Consuming metadata through dict* classes

Demo

Legacy code will probably work

 

Accessing Data Entity metadata through ODATA

• It is possible to access Data entity metadata through services
• We can open this service up for other metadata artifacts as well, as needed
• Currently only open to entities. In the future will be tables

 

 

Using the managed metadata classes

• The managed metadata API are used throughout the platform
• They are classes that expose all the metadata in a type-safe, DOM-like way
• Pros:
  • The metadata can be consumed using state-of-the-art C# constructs
• Cons
  • There is a certain learning curve to negotiate
  • There are several different APIs, for different scenarios

 

 

Managed metadata access

• Metadata is accessed through a metadata provider
• There are three distinct kinds of managed metadata access:
  • From Visual Studio Extensions
  • From compiler scenarios
  • General metadata access APIs
• Traverse with LINQ or using custom code
• Stay tuned for examples…

 

 

Checkpoint

• You understand the concept of metadata and how it relates to Dynamics AX
• You have seen several ways to query the metadata
• Let’s do something useful with this knowledge!

 

 

Extending the Visual Studio experience through add-ins

Demo

Visual Studio

File > New > Project

DAX: BP tools, dev tools add-in

You get a template, just complete the TODOs

System.console.writeline(“stuff”)

iForm, iTable are the VS views

 

Metadata access

• You have the choice between two different metadata providers:
  • One is for accessing the MD as it is loaded in VS (using classes in the Microsoft.Dynamics.Framework.Tools.MetaModel.Automation namespace)
  • Example: ITable
  • The other is the global metadata store (using classes in the Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Metadata.MetaModel namespace)
  • Example: AxTable

 

 

Compiler Extensibility

 

Simple parsing and analysis demo

Compile xpp – collect error messages

Create metadata provider

Get tabl emetadata

Compile class declaratino

Dump diagnostic messages

Run pipeline

Dump messages

“Macros are evil”

API is not elegant

 

Checkpoint

• You have seen how the metadata can be queried
• You now understand the concepts of Abstract Syntax Trees and how they relate to X++ source code.
• Let’s put this to good use!

 

 

 

Extending the compiler with BP rules demo

Visual Studio > File > New project > Use BP add in

Creates a template

There are white papers on writing BP checks

When you need to debug BP

Attach to XPPc agent

Check the wiki

 

Using the cross reference

• The cross reference database (DYNAMICSXREFDB) lives in the SQL database on your development box
• The format has been significantly simplified: it is mainly two tables
  • Names
  • References
• The cross reference powers the VS experience

 

 

Building the xref is relatively expensive but not absolutely expensive (4 minutes)

 

Q&A

 

 

Happy DAXing!