Data Migration To Dynamics Ax Projects And Highlights

This upper midmarket Corporate ERP application often requires custom programming in initial data conversion. This is not necessary a big hurdle, as its technology is flexible and technical consultants are often expected to be part of the implementation team. What might be challenging is export legacy accounting data, especially when it is not hosted in client/server SQL platform, such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server. There might be two approaches in these situations. The first one is print available reports to the text files and then massage them either in Excel, or if the number of records is huge import into MS SQL Server custom database and then clean them via SQL Views. Typically old accounting applications had such important reports as GL Accounts, Customers, Vendors, Employees. Plus likely you might find Sales History with Summary or Details, GL Historical Trial Balance, Purchasing Register. If you can print these reports to CSV or Tab delimited text file excellent! If you can only do human friendly report, then you may weed out space lines, page number, header, footer in SQL View. Second option is connecting to the old database via ODBC. Connection is often possible, but you need to get table structure and the idea on how to link document header record with lines. Lets take a look at popular historical ERP systems and the way to extract data from them:

1.Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL 2000 or Btrieve. This path is very popular, where you decided to freeze Great Plains upgrades somewhere in late 1990th or earlier 2000th and now you are experiencing operations growth and ready to move on with MRP implementation budget. Of course you can always in this situation update your legacy Great Plains to Dynamics GP 2010 (current version, as we are compiling these sentences in late June 2011). But probably you are expecting expansion internationally, where GP is not available, or you have to implement such cool features as Process Manufacturing, where AX is the way to go. Here are several ways to extract old GP data. First of all, review table structure. In user interface open Tools -> Resource Description -> Tables. Then use your intuition. If you have just few tables to export, maybe Report Writer custom report is the way to do it. Open Report Writer, select create custom report, base it on the desired table and then in the report layout place the fields you need in report body. Now you are ready to print custom report into text file, which could be imported into Excel or directly into SQL custom table. There is also the option to create ODBC connection to GP on Btrieve or Pervasive SQL. Use DDF.Set to generate required File, Field and Index DDF files. Then install Pervasive SQL ODBC driver and create System DSN for ODBC connection. At this point you are ready to create something like SQL Linked Server or linked tables in MS Access. As a hint Pervasive SQL 2000 ODBC driver is legacy one and it is not compatible with 64 bit Windows 7, Vista or Windows 2008. You would have to create data migration workstation or server, where consider installing 32 bit Windows operating system

2.Old Great Plains in Europe and migration to Axapta. Microsoft stopped supporting European customers, except UK, in the continental Europe. The phasing out was reasonable and we believe that German, French (not French Canadian as GP is currently supported in Montreal) last version was 9.0. Migration away to Dynamics AX now in 2011 is a good idea

3.QuickBooks. Having several projects done we are inclined recommend report printing into the text file and then importing them into MS SQL Server custom tables. Typical QB installation is deployed on the proprietary database platform and we do not recommend the option to crack its format

4.Great Plains DOS versions 9.5, 9.2 and earlier. Printing reports to the text files is a good idea. Numerous customers requested data export on the table level. It is Btrieve application and in earlier 2000th Microsoft Business Solutions published several recommendations to redeploy it on Pervasive SQL platform. It is possible to connect to its database via ODBC driver. Please, read ODBC manual, available in PDF format on installation CD. Doing these migrations we discovered that the easiest way is probably work in Pervasive SQL Control Center and do export SQL style queries there, saving them into text files

5.SAP Business One. It is typically based in MS SQL Server, so what you need to know is the table name to export. In user interface mark in menu Edit -> Show System Information. Then open the document, place the cursor over the field and its bearing table and field name should be shown in the lower left corner. SAP B1 also exports pretty much everything, such as reports and queries to Excel you may find this way more intuitive

6.Lets move on to legacy data export from proprietary international accounting systems. In Russian Federation very popular is 1S Bukhgalteria (1C Accounting as it translates from Russian) you may find its own proprietary DB platform as well as all the versions of MS SQL Server. Feel free to make your homework and call for help. In Brazil you may have to do data export from Microsiga ERP, where you usually have to deal with FairCom (server extension over Ctree)

7.In house programmed ERP, MRP and Accounting packages. Some popular DB platforms here are Microsoft Access, FoxPro, Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL (associated with PHP and Linux). If your legacy accounting is really old, you may find it hosted in Borland Paradox or FileMaker. Each custom application requires individual attention and estimation

8.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. Our core expertise is in International Business