Microsoft Dynamics GP Dexterity Development: FAQ Alba Spectrum
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Microsoft Business
Solutions Great Plains is Dexterity-written application and currently we see
increased interest for Great Plains customers to do in-house Dexterity
development and customization. Dexterity itself is written on C programming
language and its initial architecture was based on the Graphical and Database
platform independence, which C programming language was believed to provide.
Initially back in 1994 Great Plains Software Dynamics and Dynamics C/S+ were
realized for Macintosh and Windows and pretty similar Dexterity DYNAMICS.DIC
dictionary worked for Ctree/Faircomm and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5. In our days
Microsoft Great Plains is available for Windows and MS SQL Server only (since
version 8.0). In this small article we would like to give you highlights on the
most typical entry level Dexterity development questions
- How do I install
Dexterity. If you have
Microsoft Great Plains Standard or Professional license, you Great Plains CD
#2 has Dexterity installation files. However you need license from
Microsoft Business Solutions if you plan to do in-house software
development. If you have Small Business Manager / Small Business Financials
your distributive doesnt have Dexterity you need to call your MBS
partner and have them to do the job.
- DYNAMICS.DIC.
This is your core dictionary
which should be used for your customization.
- New Custom forms
vs. Alternate Forms. If you
are beginner, please try to stick to new Great Plains Forms. Do not
customize existing forms. If you open existing form in Dexterity you
should be aware that field scripts are stripped off and if you place your
own script over the original one you will destroy the field logic
- Dexterity
Triggers. You register them in
Startup script look Dexterity manual. If you have to deal with existing
fields logic alteration you register before or after original script
trigger. Please see the examples.
- SQL Stored Procs.
Latest version of Microsoft Great Plains is available for MS SQL Sevrer/MSDE
only and you should consider combination of Dexterity and Stored procs. Try
to avoid using old Dexterity cursors, statements, like: start range. Hint
ranges were the instrument of database platform independence and it seems to
be not the case anymore.
- Dexterity Chunk.
You should be aware that Dexterity reserves certain range of the resources
for MBS internal developers, you can not modify and use these resources, all
the custom resources you create in your customization will use the numbers
outside of the proprietary range. Your new resources will be packed into so
called chunk. Please refer to the manual on how to create the chunk.
- Customization
Upgrade. The most challenging
portion of upgrade is Alternate Great Plains forms. If you place custom
fields and logic on the existing forms then, you should know that Great
Plains can change the form for the new version and you will have to review
and redo the custom logic.
- Localization.
Dexterity has string resources this is where you can translate the strings
and have Great Plains work with your native language. However your native
language code should be single byte, not Unicode. If you need Dex to work
with Chinese, Japanese or Korean there is special utility to enable this
feature.
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