How to set the language used on forms and menus

Ax is available in many languages (approx 45 I believe). It comes in Spanish, English, Polish, German, Arabic, ... thereby underlining it's global presence.

In reports, you can use any supported language, weather you bought a license key for it or not.

This policy makes senses, as your company, your customers or vendors may not speak the same language. When you exchange documents (for example an order), you need to understand its contents.

I had a post about how to change the language in a report a while back.

Another thing is the user interface, the client you do your every day work in. You can set the language used in forms and menus with the user options. You can find them under Administration - Users - User Options.

In this setting, you are limited to the languages you bought a license for.

Now you can set the language used in the user interface by code as well. And strangely enough, this way you are not limited to the set of licensed languages (this applies to MS Dynamics Ax 2009 SP1).

You can set the language like this

infolog.language('en-us');

Play around with it and see what's available!

Fun and games with Ax

Every Windows OS version has its games included.

They're fun for the guys who programmed them, they are useful for the users who play them. And vice versa. (Solitaire in Windows for example helps you exercise your mouse control).

Ax comes with some games as well, showcasing some of it's programming techniques.

You'll find them hidden in the AOT under the forms node, just lookup under 'Tutorial'.

An overview:

Horserace (form tutorial_HorseRace)

A simple betting game, showcasing a progress bar and using random numbers.

Memory (form tutorial_Memory)

A very basic memory game, with buttons on a form.

Tetris (form tutorial_Tetris)

An implementation of the arcade hit Tetris. With graphics. And a timeOut implementation. And catching keystrokes with the task method.

During some extra time a couple of years ago, I extended the Tetris game in Ax. I've included some start levels in them. Feel free to download the modified version from my SkyDrive here .

The above games are included in Ax 2009. The older Ax versions had some more built-in fun, like BattleShips,

or Tic Tac Toe.

The people over at Trucos Ax, an Axapta community site in the Spanish language, even have a link up for a Space Invaders game in Ax. Cool! Maybe the gameplay isn't as smooth as you can find in the arcade hall, but this is definitely a solid effort to bring back that old spirit.

Know some more ways to have fun with Ax? Share it in the comments!

How to filter records in a form by code

The standard filter functionality in Ax forms is a neat and powerful feature.
Using this filter functionality in your code is something you'll definitely use at some point in time as a programmer.

Although it's possible to do it in a single line of code, I prefer a 3 step solution. That way it's more flexible.
Let me show you by example. We'll filter the customers records in form CustTable, only showing customers with currency USD.

Step 1: Declare a class variable
In the ClassDeclaration method of the form, define a range.

QueryBuildRange CurrencyQBR;

Step 2: Instantiate the new range.
In the init method on the datasource of the form, you assign the range to a specific field (after the super call).

public void init()
{
super();

CurrencyQBR = this.query().dataSourceName('CustTable').addRange(fieldnum(CustTable,Currency));
}

Step 3: In the last step, you assign a value to the range.
This is done in the executeQuery method on the same datasource of the form. Before the super call. Like this:

public void executeQuery()
{ ;

CurrencyQBR.value(queryvalue('USD'));

super();
}

You're done! When you open the form, your customer records are filtered, you only get the customers with currencycode USD set up.

Like I said in the intro of this post, this can be done in one line of code as well.
In the init method of the form datasource, after the super call, place this code:

this.query().dataSourceName('CustTable').addRange(fieldnum(CustTable,Currency)).value(queryvalue('USD'));

But this way, it's fixed. If you choose the 3 step method, you could for example use a variable in the range value. The way to go would be to place an input field on your form, get the value from it and supply it in the executeQuery method.

For example like this:

public void executeQuery()
{ ;

CurrencyQBR.value(queryvalue(MyInputField.text()));

super();
}

Just make sure the executeQuery method is executed, thus applying the desired filter (maybe be using a button on your form to activate it).
Of course it's possible to combine multiple querybuildranges.

How to create a GUID in Ax

In my previous post I talked about the Ax cache file and how it's name is created by using a GUID. Actually GUIDs are used in several places in Ax, like AIF for example.

You can create your own GUID with Ax as well, if you have a need for one. The WinAPI class has a method for that.

Example:

static void CreateGUID(Args _args)
{ str myGUID;
;
myGUID=Winapi::createGUID();

info(myGUID);
}

This method depends on the kernel function newguid() to create a globally unique identifier.

Note that you can have the GUID with or without the { }.

More information about the AUC file

What does AUC stand for?

AUC is short for Application Unicode Cache.


What is the AUC file used for?

The file contains a cache. Objects of the application object tree from Ax are stored locally, so that they don't have to be read from the AOS server over and over again.
So it should speed things up a bit.


Where can you find the AUC file?

This cache file is stored together with the user profile information. And as so it's location varies according to the operating system version used.

You can find it in following folder:
Windows XP and Windows 2003
C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data

Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 2008
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local


Can you delete the AUC file?

Barack Obama and I agree: Yes you can!
Close your Ax client session, delete the AUC file. The AUC file gets recreated automatically next time you logon to Ax.


How is the naming of the AUC file defined?

In older Ax versions (3 and 4), the filename for the cache file is based on the AOS name, server name etc. In Ax 2009, the name is based on a GUID. The GUID used is the one you can find in the Ax table SysSqmSettings (field GlobalGuid).
As such, watch out with duplicating databases for test purposes. You don't want 2 Ax server instances using the same GUID and as such the same cache file, as this will lead to unexpected results. (Should this happen: Replace the GUID in table SysSqmSettings with an empty one. A new GUID will be created by the AOS at restart.)

The Cloud

You've heard about it. You've read about it.
Maybe you've worked with it. Or only had a short test drive with it.

What am I talking about? The cloud.

Or to be more precise: Microsoft's offering for the cloud. What's in?

Over at ZDNet, they do not believe in Microsoft as a serious cloud contender. A very critical voice is heard on Microsoft's cloud offering in this article, titled 'Why Microsoft really, really, hates the cloud'.
Summing it up: In 5 years Microsoft's operating income will drop by 75 %. Because it cannot adapt to the changing IT environment.

My opinion, for what it is worth: A bit over simplified reasoning in this article.

Will we see a move to cloud based applications: Absolutely. Your communications will be without doubt cloud based. Email only being one of them.
Your basic word processing, spreadsheet functions will be cloud based. I can dig that. Image, audio and video management, sure.
But your business critical applications like an ERP system? I don't think so. Partially maybe.
Small companies (-25 employees) will be interested. But anything above that?

I also do not see a reason on why Microsoft cannot adapt and change it's income pattern (that's without doubt needed). But are Cisco or IBM better positioned then Microsoft in this area then?

Microsoft is not postponing the arrival of Cloud Computing as stated in the article at ZDNet. It's just gearing up things and when and where there is money to be made with the Cloud, Microsoft will be around.
Remember the spread sheet. Lotus 1-2-3 was once number one. And the word processor, with WordPerfect. Or the internet browser.
Maybe this time around Microsoft's rival isn't another software company.

How to get rid of the report scaling message the lazy way

When a report doesn't fit on a page, depending on it's properties Ax will resize the report. This is a powerful and very useful feature.
Now Ax will inform you that the report has been rescaled (Report is scaled xx percent to fit to page) and this message is generally not well received by users.

Users are annoyed by the message, they get it every time they run the report, they cannot do anything about it, they have to click to close the infolog, ...

Ax has a builtin feature to suppress this scaling message. You can modify the init method of your report, and add something like this:

this.printJobSettings().suppressScalingMessage(true);

This is very effective and will do the job.
Only, this requires you to modify every report with these kind of messages.

A nicer way would be if we could switch it off in one place for all reports. Fortunately, this is possible as well.

Go to class SysReportRun, in the Run method, place following code before the call to super:

if(this.printJobSettings())
this.printJobSettings().suppressScalingMessage(true);

Now we don't have to modify each and every report and our users are happy.

Note that you can still override the settings in your report. In some reports this is done by default, like SalesInvoice and SalesConfirm.