Speed up your compiles in AX 2012

Posted on March 6, 2014 by janeteblake

Hope those who are at #Conv14 are enjoying it! In the meantime, I’ll post a tip I got from Microsoft at #AXTech2014 for the rest of us. 🙂

Simple tricks to speed up compilation: for pre-CU7

  • Single machine deployment
  • Add memory to the build machine
  • Don’t constrain SQL server memory consumption
  • Install KB2844240
  • Install a machine with a faster CPU
  • Alternatively, solid state drives on the build machine

With these, we can get to 45 minutes for an AOT compile

And then, turbo it:turbo

For CU7 (and later), do the above, plus:

  • Parallel compile: axbuild.exe is a new standalone command line tool to coordinate multiple AOS in the same box to complete a full compilation in parallel

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, AX2012 R3, Dynamics AX | Leave a comment

New and exciting things coming up

Posted on January 31, 2014 by janeteblake

What a great time to be alive! 🙂DeliverAmazingCustomerExperiences

– I have a client going live… how exciting for them! Truly, it’s harder than birthing a baby! Although the followup later is vastly different. 🙂
– I am working with a new services book that I hope will be published soon. And am anxiously awaiting the Inside book coming in June.
– I’m really psyched for #AXTech2014 and the sessions I can take! Wonder what my director will choose for me! 🙂 (Hint to him: if you want suggestions… just reach out…) I hope to blog from there of course! But at night –
– R3 has very cool features! I will try to summarize some of the ones I have noticed so far, prior to the conference next week. And then blog from there, too. But at night, not during the conference; I want to be focusing 😀 Also, there are some elbows I want to rub. 😉

So stay tuned! New and exciting things coming our way!

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, AX2012 R3, Dynamics AX | 1 Comment

New whitepaper: Financial consolidations and currency translation

Posted on January 27, 2014 by janeteblake

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I come from a long line of accountants… I married an accountant… and now my college son is enjoying only one course – guess what it is – accounting, of course! Some of my best friends are number crunchers.

 

So you would think that my eyes would not glaze over when someone says “financial consolidations” – or maybe you would correctly predict that they would!

 

At any rate, whitepapers DO excite me, and I’m pleased to share that Microsoft has just released a new whitepaper entitled “Financial consolidations and currency translation” described as “This white paper shows the approach Management Reporter and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 use to consolidate multi-company and multi-currency data. It is intended for finance and accounting end users and application consultants.” The download is available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=389548

 

Happy DAXing!

 

Posted in AX2012, Dynamics AX | Leave a comment

Hot Swapping in Production

Posted on January 16, 2014 by janeteblake

Hotswap ScreenshotA (repeat of) a word to the wise – with a twist, if you read to the end. One of our clients was getting CIL errors; I don’t have details. It was discovered (I cannot take credit) that the checkbox to “Allow hot swapping of assemblies when the server is running” (or on my version “Enable the hot-swapping of assemblies for each development session.”) on the server configuration was checked.

A reminder of what we read in Inside Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012:

“However, you should never do this in a production server because any breakpoints that are encountered will stop all of the managed code from running, essentially blocking any users who are logged on to the server and processes that are running.”

The book goes on to mention performance issues as well.

http://books.google.com/books?id=VOhSqaD2I6sC&pg=PA85

A coworker just pointed out, and this is the part that really gets me: The installation default is to have the checkbox set on.

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, Bug, Dynamics AX | 1 Comment

Five Good Minutes in Microsoft Dynamics AX – Power Pivot Tricks, AX Reports, and Super Bowl Shuffles

Posted on January 9, 2014 by janeteblake

Five PowerPivot Favorites (the “Shuffle”):
1. Create relationships in PP
2. “Related” function in PP
3. Normal Excel “if” function in PP
4. Greatest DAX Formula – “calculate”
5. PowerView bringing it all together!

Chad clarifies the tasks which are required, versus those which are nice to have, and why you’d want to do, or not do them.

In just seconds each, Chad shows us several cool things in PowerPivot, beginning and ending with the fantasy football (American Football) league!

The difference between this vblog and previous ones is that this one doesn’t go near Microsoft Dynamics AX – but Chad as already addressed AX and PP many times and I’m sure will again.

Finally, Chad addresses viewer comments and questions.

Enjoy!

Happy DAXing!

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Business Intelligence, Video tutorials | Leave a comment

Error executing code: FormRun (data source) has no valid runable code in method ‘new’.

Posted on December 19, 2013 by janeteblake

Whenever we tried to edit a workflow (it happened with EVERY workflow, but did not seem to be happening outside of workflow) we would get this error:

“Error executing code: FormRun (data source) has no valid runable code in method ‘new’.”
ErrorExecutingCode
The first thing in this case is ALWAYS to do a compile, cross your fingers, full CIL, restart the compile because the users clobbered it, dance around the moon, incremental CIL, … no, sorry, got carried away.

90% of the time this type of error is because something did not compile. However that was not the case with me. I opened up a support case and insisted to Microsoft that the code was unmodified. However, once they got me to delve into the call stack (thanks to Scott Wright at Microsoft), I see that there WAS a modification – the security development tool!

I removed that tool, went through the checklist, and the users are editing their workflows again. *shakes head*

Next time it would be nice to post a happy post rather than “here are my problems and how I fixed them.” How about AXTech2014?

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, Bug, Dynamics AX | 3 Comments

Parameter _reportName cannot be null or empty.

Posted on December 17, 2013 by janeteblake

HitCompileMemeNote to self: when you get an error “Parameter _reportName cannot be null or empty” then remember the post you found at http://axdax.blogspot.com/2013/11/parameter-reportname-cannot-be-null-or.html and let a full compile finish.

The blog mentions that you can compile the class referenced. But for me that just opened it up to another class, and another… so a compile of all classes did it for me.

Thanks to Sivert at axdax!

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, Dynamics AX | 1 Comment

Microsoft Dynamics AX Technical Conference

Posted on December 13, 2013 by janeteblake

Very excited about going to #AXTech2014! As a geek they don’t usually let me out. 😉

They recently announced the speakers will be Hal Howard and Christan Pedersen.

I was prepping for it by looking at the sessions they’ll be offering http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/axtechconference/Session-Catalog.aspx and looking to infer changes in R3. Here’s what I’m gathering:

– More of an emphasis on projects

– New warehouse/shipping functionality

I’m not involved in any kind of R3 TAP, so I’m just making this up. I just don’t recall having seen so many classes on projects before. This should be very interesting, I’m looking forward to it!

 

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, AX2012 R3, Dynamics AX | Leave a comment

AOS Environment Name in Developer Workspace

Posted on December 5, 2013 by janeteblake

instancenameMy colleagues were recently discussing the AOS name in the status bar. They found that it’s not reliable. Please see the post linked below for a good description of the investigation. Yet last night when I put the “wrong” instance name in the configuration, or none at all, AX crashed upon startup. (The “right” one, the correction, is shown in the picture.) So (like many of us) there’s more to this guy than first appears! 🙂

AOS Environment Name in Developer Workspace

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, Dynamics AX | Leave a comment

DAX Development: Compile, Generate (CIL), and Restart (AOS)

Posted on December 5, 2013 by janeteblake

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I found a very interesting post today. It talks about compiling vs. full IL vs. incremental IL. Read the post and read the comments (which are by a couple of AX superstars). In the comments there’s a link to a very good video about the direction of IL.

 

DAX Development: Compile, Generate (CIL), and Restart (AOS)

 

Happy DAXing!

Posted in AX2012, Dynamics AX | 2 Comments