A few months ago I wrote about how, for various reasons, I was fed up with the Dynamics GP Web Services and was moving towards writing my own web services working against eConnect. (Click here for that article)
Now the reality is that most of the integrations I write are small Windows Forms or intranet applications run within the local LAN and can directly access the SQL server. I also wondered about writing GP Add-Ins using the Visual Studio Tools for Dynamics GP.
In either of these scenarios, not only do I not see the sense of using the Dynamics GP Web Services, but of even using the two most documented methods of accessing eConnect using the COM+ or Message Queue interfaces. I’ve started looking at using the base stored procedures directly in the database.
Since each XML node maps one to one to a stored procedure of the same name, I’m able to just use the schema documentation to see what the various parameters mean. I haven’t put anything into production yet with this, but I’ll let you know how it goes.
Anyone else use eConnect this way? Let me know.
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Hey John,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the article. I have heard of others running into problems with the eConnect API. This is irrelevant to the post, but wanted to see what is necessary to provide integrations using eConnect. What is required on the client's end to utilize eConnect? What would be required on the ISV's end in order to use the eConnect API? Thanks for your help.
If you're going to use the COM API on a client, you need to install and configure the eConnect runtime on each client. You'll also need to have the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) properly configured on both the client and server (this is documented in the installation instructions).
ReplyDeleteDTC configuration is where I've had te most trouble, which is why I've generally shied away from installing eConnect on a lot of clients and generally created my own web service for it.
To use the eConnect stored procedures on a client, all you'll need of course is the ability to connect to the SQL database with the proper permissions, which is why I've found it an interesting option. You just need to know what order to run them in. I have another article on that.
Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any other questions.
John