An Overview of Dynamics AX 2012 Services
There are many Services provided by Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to work with third part components. These Dynamics AX 2012 Services are actually programmable artifacts. Such Services are given in normal X++ code, so that developers can easily modify them depending on the specific needs of their business.
Services in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 are grouped together and deployed as ports. A port is basically a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service host and all the Services that are hosted, are Windows communication foundation end points.
Given below are the Services that are currently available in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.
- Document Services
- Custom Services
- System Services
Document Service
This was introduced in Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. It enables the user to exchange data between internal and external systems via XML documents. Document Services are generated from a query that models the business entity. For example, a customer query will run the Document Service Generation Wizard to create the Service artifacts.
Document Services include logic to handle the details of how a query will be serialized or De-serialized from the XML that is sent across a network. For synchronization of Document Services, there are two new entities introduced in Dynamics AX.
- getKey
- getChangedKey
Developers need to extend these functions to enable their own scenario.
Custom Service
This Service enables developers to expose any logic written in x++ through a service interface. The support for Custom Services was introduced in Dynamics AX 2009, but it was limited to some specific data types. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 with the integration of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), attributes can be set on the Data Contract class to make them serialize and De-serialize across the network connection.
Custom Service
This is a new Service category introduced in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. This type of Service is not customizable and not mapped to any X++ code. There are three types of Services that come under System Services:
- Query Service
- Metadata Service
- User Session Service
All these Services have unique functionality that will be discussed in my next post.
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