Data Conversion To Sap Business One From Great Plains Dynamics Plus Notes On Odbc Connection

Data Conversion To Sap Business One From Great Plains Dynamics Plus Notes On Odbc Connection

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SAP B1 is popular as Small Business ERP system however we know the cases when multinational company with Dynamics GP in their headquarters decided to deploy Business One in its overseas subsidiaries. And in a matter of several years they switched to B1 for headquarters as well. Why they decided to do it? Well, there are reasonable advantages in running accounting on Business One for the company working on international markets. This small business ERP is localized virtually worldwide and user interface is available in such languages as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese. It might be marketed as small growing business MRP, accounting and ERP however it is not limited in its power to server just a small company. In this small paper we would like to come through data migration from such popular packages as Great Plains Dynamics as well as its predecessor Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows and Macintosh. Lets begin with data migration tool:

1.Data Transfer Workbench is recommended for initial data import in the implementation cycle. DTW works with so-called Excel templates, which are actually CSV templates. You fill them in and Data Transfer tool moves them with complete business logic validation into the B1. Of course it is always good idea to keep data migration project scope to be limited. Could you imagine filling up CSV templates for historical Sales Invoices with several millions of lines? This is definitely a limitation. But there is the way to do large scale historical data migration in DTW. It is ODBC data source. It works the following way. You have to move your historical tables into ODBC compliant database. We recommend you to use MS SQL Server data import wizard (SSIS package). When the data sits in SQL custom tables consider creating SQL view which exactly reproduces the CSV file template. Use Union construction to create the header with column names as the first row followed by the data rows. ODBC data source allows you to break through CSV and Excel volume limitations. If you are programmer you may make a comment well, it is apparent for me how to fill in CSV files. However how do I know my legacy application table structure and how do I connect to its database via ODBC? Lets talk about Great Plains

2.Table Structure of Great Plains Dynamics. The simple way to research the structure is to login to user interface and in menu follow the path Tools -> Resource Description -> Tables. Try to find the description of such popular tables as GL20000 (General Ledger open year posted transactions), GL30000 historical year GL entries. Alternative way to research the structure is installing Software Development Kit where table diagram is available

3.Exporting data. The first question here is your database platform. Historically GP was available on Btrieve and its successor Pervasive SQL 2000 as well as on Ctree/Faircom and Microsoft SQL Server. We do not really face the questions about exporting data from SQL Server. Btrieve however is a bit more complex to connect via ODBC. Btrieve ODBC connection requires so-called Data Definition Files (DDF). To produce these files you have to do some homework. By default DDF generator might not be installed. Use your version installation CD to add this feature to your user workstation. Read administrator manual for detailed procedure. When you have Files, Fields and Indexes DDF files generated you are ready to connect to Btrieve/Pervasive SQL database. The best results could be achieved in Pervasive SQL Control Center where you can issue SQL Select statements and save them into text file. If you consider yourself as MS Access guru you can connect to GP tables via Linked Table mechanism where you switch to ODBC data source link. In the past when Mac PowerPC servers were competing with Windows servers Ctree/Faircom platform was popular on the Mac hive. In our experience Ctree database performance is a bit lower in comparison to Btrieve. Ctree ODBC driver could be installed from your original GP installation media

4.Great Plains Accounting on DOS. Sometimes we are getting calls from the prospects where they are reporting that they are on Great Plains. This is true, but their system is actually not Dynamics but its predecessor GPA for DOS, Mac or Windows. This archaic ERP application was based in Btrieve database and it also requires DDF files to establish connection via ODBC. Please read ODBC manual which is available in PDF format on your installation CD

5.SAP Business One deployment recommendations for multinational company. Important thing here is centralized hosting. By various reasons international facilities are tending to establish their local IT departments with their local Windows and SQL Servers. If you succumb to such a trend the result is financial and general control weakening. Better idea is to have strong corporate IT policies where you require vital corporate applications to be hosted in the United States based headquarters and exposed to international user via Citrix application server or Microsoft Terminal Services. There is also the option to connect via VPN. Current version 8.81 (July 2011 as we write this paper) merged former A and B versions (as it was in 2005A/B and 2007A/B) into one and all the foreign countries could be hosted on the same SQL Server

6.Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representative pick up the phone in St. Joseph, MI call center). help@efaru.com We have local presence in Chicagoland, Southern California, South West Michigan, Houston and Dallas areas of Texas. We serve customers USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed). Our consultants speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese. We specially stress our experience helping multinational companies in their Corporate ERP implementation

About the Author:
Andrew Karasev is Great Plains Certified Master, MVP, help@efaru.com 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904. He is also the initiator of eFaru project http://www.efaru.com and founder of Alba Spectrum information space



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