gatesasbait: On Dynamics Ax 5.0 compare tool enhancements

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Источник: http://gatesasbait.spaces.live.com/B...B9F5!134.entry
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Good Tuesday morning,
 
I've been one of the lucky few who in the past months have had the chance of working with early Ax 5.0 builds. Build 538, released at the end of October was nearly stable for most developper oriented functionalities, but was not feature complete. Yesterday, we rolled our projects into the new Build 366, which seems to be closer to feature complete both for the user and developper, but not as stable. (what's up with the decreasing build numbers though?)
 
One of the features of Ax 5.0 I'd like to write about here are the enhancements to the Layer Compare utility. It's unchanged for the most part except for a few new key features.

1. Microsoft has integrated the Usage Data (SysLastValue) into the Compare form. This allows the form to remember previous compared layers, and to open up the tool with already those layers selected for compare. If you were comparing SYS and BUS on the last object you opened up, it will select again those layers at next compare. That's neat!
2. Another nice feature is the fact that on properties (tables and forms in particular), no longer are we only seeing Blue and Red highlights, they now added Green. Blue and Red remain unchanged and serve the same purpose as before, but Green was added to display what the original value of the property was under OLD SYS. This makes identifying mods quicker. Pretty neat too.
3. Yet another change is the fact that the code paste and remove arrows in the right compare pane are now displayed at the left of code blocks, instead of at the extreme right, which could sometimes require the developper to scroll all the way to the right before seeing it. It helps to merge code faster.
4. A major capability MS added, is that the compare tool can now paste or remove design elements onto forms and reports. Previously you couldn't paste controls from one layer to another using the arrows of the compare tool, now you can. There are a few gliches though, for example, you can't paste datasources from one layer into another (at least not on build 538, I haven't tried on 366). You have to create it first with the right name, and then you can paste the properties.Last but not least (there may be more improvements I haven't noticed yet) is the fact that the 'Compare' menu option is not longer under "Add-ins...", it's now one level up, on the same level as the 'Compile'.

There's one major thing I would have liked Microsoft to add to the Compare tool, and it's the possibility of right-clicking on a project node and doing a complete project compare, smae as you would during the import of an XPO. I guess I could build that myself though since most of the framework is already there...
 
Call me lazy ;)


Источник: http://gatesasbait.spaces.live.com/B...B9F5!134.entry