Dynamics NAV developer lurking on AX

Tarek_Demiati

I've been a NAV developer for the last past 12 years and I've been watching the growing AX community with a great deal of interest.

I would love to hear the feedback from NAV developer who have made the switch to AX, how steep was the learning curve, from what I've understood the development language is a bit more complicated to master than in NAV.

I do have access to partner source an can download AX2009, will I require a development licence if I wanted to customize the demo database ?

The NAV market is currently pretty dry, so I might spend the rest of the year checking out AX :-)

abdel

developing on dynamics NAV and dynamics AX are completly different. At first, You have to learn OOP objet oriented programming, then X++ and SQL.
For training , you can use VPC or VMWare, it isnt fast . In this case, you don't need licence code.

good luck

Tarek_Demiati

What about the standard AX application, does the source code is as open & customizable as NAV, I consider NAV has a pretty good swiss knife, you can bend it pretty much how you would like (for better or for worst)
Is it the same in AX ? ie have you got access to the various posting routines which impacts the various ledgers

abdel

you have acces to the code. Frankly, I find that the code is better organized better in AX than in Nav. AX uses a layer technology to store objects. This layers help differentiate the objects in AX as a standard objects from Microsoft, but also objects provided by Solution Providers, partners and as those developed by customers themselves.
The layer technology in Axapta is used to organize the objects of the standard package
and customization made. When editing a standard object,AX copies part or the entire object from one of these lower layers into the current layer. Since an object may be modified at more than one layer, source of the copy is the highest level, below the current layer, in which the element you are changing exists.
Your changes will be saved in the current layer. The modifications made to the top layer
will always override the lower layer. If you want to ignore these modifications, just delete the object in the current layer and you will be back where you started.

Tarek_Demiati

sounds like pretty neat : Object orientation at it's finest : Inheritance + Method overloading/overriding =D>

abdel wrote:

you have acces to the code. Frankly, I find that the code is better organized better in AX than in Nav. AX uses a layer technology to store objects. This layers help differentiate the objects in AX as a standard objects from Microsoft, but also objects provided by Solution Providers, partners and as those developed by customers themselves.
The layer technology in Axapta is used to organize the objects of the standard package
and customization made. When editing a standard object,AX copies part or the entire object from one of these lower layers into the current layer. Since an object may be modified at more than one layer, source of the copy is the highest level, below the current layer, in which the element you are changing exists.
Your changes will be saved in the current layer. The modifications made to the top layer
will always override the lower layer. If you want to ignore these modifications, just delete the object in the current layer and you will be back where you started.

jaestevan

Tarek Demiati wrote:

sounds like pretty neat : Object orientation at it's finest : Inheritance + Method overloading/overriding =D>

Simply and cleany true =D>

AX developing is way more organised, pure and strict OOP oriented (not only object-based like NAV; you are not restricted to use objects but you can declare and use your own classes) and technically more advanced that NAV.

I have worked with both of they during the last years and the diference is quite big. Not all are advantages, to be fair, developing in NAV is way quicker than in AX. Forcing you to "do thinks well" makes developing AX less "rushable".

If you are looking for information about AX you should make a look at this book: http://www.lulu.com/morphxit, it's clear well organised, it is a nice starting point in AX developing. When you have the basics, looks for the "Inside Dynamics AX" book from Microsoft Press. This is impressive. And take a look for the "Best Practices" for AX developing, at MSDN, this will give you an overview of the philosophy:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc967435.aspx

Regards :thumbsup: