(1888PressRelease)
June 13, 2008 - When Microsoft acquired Great Plains Software and then integrated Great Plains into so-called Microsoft Dynamics ERP products family as Dynamics GP, modification tools became more Microsoft and .Net oriented, as you could expect. However in the initial design in earlier 1990th Great Plains Dynamics was intended as multi platform product and its fundament was built on new technology named Great Plains Dexterity. Considering complicated origin of GP, let’s review development tools:
1. Dexterity. Great Plains Dexterity, as we already mentioned is the heart of GP design, and it is in turn written as the shell in C programming language to secure certain flexibility, especially the option to switch from one operating system or computer platform to another. Being very powerful and flexible, Dex doesn’t facilitate so-called rapid development scenario as it is not object oriented and it requires you as programmer to have several years of extensive Dexterity programming prior to participation in Dexterity programming project. Dexterity has its own scripting language Sanscript. Latest versions of Dex support such cool Microsoft technologies as COM objects and Web Services, plus you can call SQL Stored procedures from Dex code. To get quick tour into Dexterity architecture, you may install it from GP CD #2 and open Dynamics.dic file – this dictionary has core GP logic and it is written in Dexterity.
2. VBA and Modifier. We were watching closely the competition between various GP customizing tools. And we still think that Modifier should be reviewed prior to eConnect. Modifier is in essence the module, written in Dexterity, which allows you to add buttons and fields to existing screens of GP as well as take them off. To animate new fields you use VBA scripting language, often you use ADO technology to access GP tables from modified forms.
3. eConnect. This SDK opens for you GP objects: master records (customer, vendor, GL Account, employee, prospect) and work transactions (SOP invoice, Purchase Order, Payroll Entry). eConnect is based on encrypted SQL stored procedures, plus it has several layers of technology wrappers – in fact it is friendly for Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB developer. If you are integrating eCommerce website with your GP back office, we recommend you to consider eConnect as the main integration tool, also consider Autoposting Server to post batches of SOP invoices in GP.
4. SQL Stored Procedures Integrations. If you think eConnect is too heavy and complex and you are comfortable to do light SQL insert statement to populate GP tables, then SQL scripting is an option. However, we discourage newcomers from trying SQL insertion prior to researching other integration tools first.
5. GP Integration. Of course integration is not the same as customization, however we would like to orient you here as well. GP traditionally has Integration Management Module. With current version 10.0 IM has new connectors – from now on you can use eConnect connectors to do integrating.
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum http://www.albaspectrum.com help ( @ ) albaspectrum dot com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, serving Great Plains USA and Canada nationwide. Local service in Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Diego. If you need custom programming for GP, we are happy to help you with Dexterity, eConnect, VBA/Modifier, SQL Stored Procedures, Crystal Reports. We also provide instant support to new and existing clients via web sessions.
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