Dynamics Ax Initial Data Import Phase And Exporting Historical Transactions From Great Plains

Dynamics Ax Initial Data Import Phase And Exporting Historical Transactions From Great Plains

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Data conversion especially historical documents move from one ERP system to another is something not recommended but sometimes required. In Axapta such migration technology as Excel Import is popular and you may consider doing it internally without appealing to consulting budget. Popular migration path is from old version of Great Plains Dynamics or even its DOS version GP Accounting. We would like to review GP table structure, data export options and other things to consider. This small publication is not intended as user manual. It is rather several important highlights to give you the idea what should be your next homework. Lets begin with Great Plains versions:

1.Dynamics GP on Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft Business Solutions announced in earlier 2000th that version 8.0 which was new those days will be available on MS SQL Server platform exclusively. Since then versions 9.0, 10.0 and 2010 were released up to now as we are writing these lines in August of 2011. Typically you have SQL DBA in IT staff and the only information you need is table structure which will be considered below

2.Great Plains Dynamics on Pervasive SQL 2000 or Btrieve. Earlier versions such as 7.5, 7.0, 6.0, 5.5, 5.0, 4.0 were also available on Pervasive SQL Server which is successor of Btrieve technology. Some customers might be on Ctree/Faircom but the might be only few percent comparing to Btrieve. Faircom was popular on Macintosh PowerPC servers

3.Great Plains Accounting for DOS, Windows or Mac version 9.5, 9.2 and earlier. GPA was popular in earlier 1990th on such server platforms as Novel and WindowsNT. It was based in Btrieve and later on Microsoft Business Solutions in earlier 2000th published knowledge articles where GPA was recommended to be deployed on Pervasive SQL 2000 and up to now we know the customers who were able to move GPA and host it on such popular modern Windows Servers as Small Business Server 2008 or Windows 2003 in 32 bit editions

4.Table Structure discovery in GP. In user interface please follow the path: Tools -> Resource Descriptions -> Tables. Here apply your intuition and try to spot such tables as SOP30200 (Sales Document Header) and SOP30300 (Sales Document Lines). These two tables are very popular in historical data export as they contain SOP Invoice, Return, Sales Order and Quotation header and details. If you have your legacy accounting on MS SQL Server the rest could be done in Query Analyzer or Designer depending on the SQL Server version. If you have to deal with Pervasive SQL database or Ctree and keep reading

5.Data Definition Files and connection to Btrieve database via ODBC DSN or Pervasive Control Center. DDF files need to be generated in order to connect to Pervasive SQL database. This database resides in the computer folder and each table is typically hosted in dedicated file with BTR extension. Each BTR file should have IDX counterpart where indexing information is described. DDF files could be generated via GenDDF.set file dragging and dropping on Dynamics.exe. Please note here that you can create DDF files not only for Dynamics.dic or core dictionary. You can create these files for all the Dexterity programmed add-ons described in Dynamics.set settings file, including such popular ones as Intellisol Advanced Purchase Order Processing or Project Accounting

6.GPA for DOS and ODBC connection. Here we have to rather recommend external consulting help as Btrieve files with DAT extension could host multiple relative tables making SQL select statement result set not humanly readable

7.Alternatives to ODBC connection in data export. Consider the method to print the report containing historical document into text file and then opening it in Excel for cleansing. We also like the way where you are importing text file into custom SQL table and do cleansing in custom SQL Views

8.Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904 (for international customers, where our representatives pick up the phone in Naperville and 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 and Chinese. One of our experiences is international Corporate ERP and Consolidated Financial reporting

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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