AX2012 And Eventing Concepts

One of the great new development improvements for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012,

For most people, that have ever done any Object oriented development or programming, eventing is a concept that most familiar.

It's is a concept that is used to fire before, just before or just after a given method call takes place. These can also be design within the middle of a method as well, if a given peice of business logic within the middle of a method, make sense to tie an event too.

If you bring this to a more functional level, you can think of eventing as something that happens for a given object. So if you have PackingSlip and Invoice. These are functional concepts represented by technical objects. Classes, business logic, etc.

So when something happens, you can say a Sales Order was invoiced, or packing slip updated.

To help explain, take a look at the following diagram.:


As you can see, we have a basic workflow of functional concepts taking place. We see that the two main functional concepts are PackingSlip and Invoice.

With these two concepts we see two common "events" or a Pre-PackingSlip Update, and a Post-PackingSlip Update. The same is said for Invoice, in that we have a Pre-Invoiced and a Post-Invoiced. What we also see is a custom, Mid-Invoiced event as well.

From this, we see two events that are used to call into CSharp or Xpp business logic, when these events are fired.

One is Post-PackinSlip and the other from the Custom Mid-Invoice event. This, I hope gives a good construct and idea behind the purpose and use of eventing.

You have the ability to "raise" and event, depending on certain actions within business logic. These events, when raised, have listeners, that can then fire into either Xpp code, or CSharp (.Net) developed code.

Moving forward, events are meant to support the following development concepts.:

• Observation
• Information dissemintation
• Decoupling

After getting into what eventing can offer a customer doing custom development, or an ISV offering vertical expertise, we can see how this can help with the pains of upgrading.

So with eventing and Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, a new possible way to develop custom code for a customer, or as an ISV is offered that has all kinds of great benefits. Everyone that does any development in Microsoft Dynamics AX, that does not undestand eventing, needs to make a priority to understanding eventing.

• Programming with Events Using .NET (VB, but great description of events!)
• Events and Delegates .Net 4.0
• How to: Raise and Consume Events .Net 4.0

The above are some great resources to help understand eventings, event, delegates, and technical uses of events from a .Net point of view.

This is very important, as Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 eventing, is based on .Net Eventing Concepts. What you will see, when looking at eventing in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 is.:

• Producer - business logic or entity that raises an event
• Consumer - a event listener, or logic called when a specific event is fired
• Event - the given event called or raised when a process takes place
• Event Payload - data or information caried within a fired event, for the consumers use
• Delegate - is defined as informatin that was passed from a producer to a listener or consumer when an event is raised

I hope that you enjoyed this deeper dive into eventing with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, and eventing concept. It's a great move, that allows all kinds of possibilities, that all of us .Net developers, who also develop in Xpp have been looking for!