Great,Plains,Customization,how computer Great Plains Customization: how to Integrate Legacy Applicat
----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc
Lets begin reviewing tools in brief one by one, being sort of a bit technical, so it should be targeted to IT people, programmers and DBA:1. GP Integration Manager. IM has long evolution from pure OLE server to more modern and advanced technologies and connectors. For GP version 10.0 you have rich collection of eConnect integrations. eConnect in turn is the set of encrypted SQL stored procedures, which are working a way faster than traditional connectors (OLE Server, using GP workstation forms and fields to validate integrating business logic).2. Text and CSV files integrations. It seems like Text and CSV integration drivers were sort of released in beta testing phase in 2003 and 2004, so if you are using Advanced ODBC integration with union SQL constructions you may receive strange error messages about saving integration format for text tab or comma delimited files. There is work around, however outside of the scope of this article, call as for assistance3. eConnect. As you already know from ready the topic above, IM deploys eConnect connectors, however you can program eConnect methods directly in MS Visual Studio directly, being C# or VB developer. This is especially helpful if you are dealing with eCommerce integration, sending data to GP ERP backoffice4. eConnect limitations. This nice tool works on the level of master records: customer, GL account, vendor, employee, project, contract, etc. and work transactions: SOP invoice, POP receipt, GL transaction to give you few samples. However eConnect doesnt post batches or transactions (with single exception it posts Bank Reconciliation documents, however it is not a big help for e-commerce integration). If you really need automatic posting of GP batches from e-commerce website application, you should consider deploying Alba Spectrum posting server5. SQL data feeding. This is when you create and deploy SQL stored procedures or insert statements. If you plan something like that, you should be really familiar with GP data distribution on the table level please review GP SDK, which could be installed from Dynamics GP CD #26. Great Plains Dexterity. If the case when your integration should address custom tables and logic, created in turn by past developers in GP Dex, please consult with Dex programmers or GP ISV partner to understand your options
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