Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Services - My Review

There are a couple of great books on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and this is one of them, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Services. I read this book as a preparation for an internal course I did not long ago, and because I already knew SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is now heavily supported in Dynamics AX 2012. I had also read Michael Fruergaard Pontoppidan's review and got even more encouraged to get myself a copy.

The first part of the book introduce you to SOA and how this is solved through Windows Communication Foundation. Basic concepts, programming patterns and terminology are very well explained, building up to how AX 2012 and its new Application Integration Framework presents these mechanisms for us as developers and technicians. You will learn about all the prebuilt and ready to use services. The book also discuss how CIL works in AX2012, which is a very important topic for any AX2012 developer.

The book also discuss a topic that might seem to be unrelated to Services, the Business Operation Framework, also known as SysOperationFramework. It is included due to its relation to how Services is implemented, but as most of us AX2012 developers know, the SysOperationFramework is central to AX 2012 regardless to whether or not you are planning to use it for external services. These chapters should be read by all AX 2012 developers.

The last part of the book takes you through various examples of implementations using Services, both providing them and consuming them. I really liked the examples showing SysOperationFramework and how we as developers can take advantage of this new replacement for RunBase(Batch).


I found the chapters easy to read and understand, and being the geek I am it was hard to put the book away. While building my course presentation I eventually restructured some of the content compared to the order in the book, but mainly due to my own OCD preference. It is definitely a good book to have on your tablet/surface while traveling between locations and want something interesting to read.


I would highly recommend this book for any AX2012 developer. Even if you're not planning on developing integration services right now, if you follow the basic recommended guidelines (ie MVC) while building the business operations in AX2012, you risk creating application blocks that is already prepared for SOA - which is golden!

Available at Packt Publishing directly or at Amazon Online Bookstore.

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