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Great Plains Development: Dexterity, eConnect, .Net programming – Alba Spectrum

Microsoft Dynamics GP has several modification tools and SDK available – if you are software programmer, who needs to select the tool of choice to do specific job, please read this small publication to understand your programming options and pluses and minuses of each tool. Also, please take into consideration the fact, that Great Plains ERP was introduced to the market in earlier 1990th as Great Plains Software Dynamics and at this time it is matured system, which is pretty stable, but considering its size and all the available business logic – it might be too complex to do modification without external consultant help. OK, let’s go on and review the tools:
1. Microsoft Dexterity. Former product name is Great Plains Dexterity. Dex has its own scripting language Sanscript and it is in fact Integrated Development Environment and architecture, which is a shell, written in C programming language in turn. Dex is virtually all-mighty, when you think about modifying GP business login and changing programmatically this ERP application. However you should understand that Dexterity was designed back in late 1980th, when such popular concepts as Object Oriented Programming (OOP) were not yet implanted. So, in fact Dex is procedural language and so, it requires more codes and it is not overly easy to debug Dexterity scripts. From time to time we hear from the customers, that they would like to put one of their in-staff programmers to lead and perform GP Dexterity customizations – we think this is not practical, as again Dex requires relatively long learning curve (several years), which should be supported by programmer exposure to different GP modifications scenarios, which is typically impossible for internal employees
2. eConnect. This SDK and development tool was dedicated initially to eCommerce programmers, who were considering to use GP as back end ERP for e-commerce web applications. eConnect heart is written in SQL stored procedures (they are encrypted and you can not alter their logic directly). There are various opinion on eConnect, in our opinion – it is replication of Dexterity logic with some OOP improvements. If you are comfortable in programming for .Net platform: SQL, C# or even VB.Net – eConnect is what you need to invest your time into, instead of trying to get “experienced” in Dexterity
3. Direct SQL scripting and .Net programming. Of course you can use direct SQL views and stored procedures and call them via ADO.Net technology. We recommend you first to try eConnect approach, and if direct SQL call is easier and there is no risk to violate GP business logic, then go ahead and call SQL script directly – especially in reading information from master tables: customer or vendor master for example
4. GP Integrations and integrating tool selection. Again here we say that you can use multiple tools, when you are considering integration, please review GP Integration Manager module first, as it is now rewritten in eConnect and it boosts IM performance
Andrew Karasev, Alba Spectrum Group, http://www.albaspectrum.com help@albaspectrum.com 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918. Serving GP customers in Illinois, Texas, California, Florida, Wisconsin, New York, Michigan and USA and Canada nation wide via remote support. Our service is popular in USA country side, where you do not expect local consultants to be available and we cover the whole country with travel onside with initial user training – then we typically save your budget by convenient remote support, as we already are familiar with your key IT and accounting personnel. Local service is available in Chicago, Houston, Naperville, Oakbrook, Wheaton, Joliet, Plainfield, Aurora, Elgin, Springfield, Morris, Ottawa, LaSalle, Channahon, Brookfield, Villa Park, Downers Grove, Lisle, Hinsdale, Lincolnwood, Zion, Kankakee, Braidwood, Niles.