Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Application Integration Framework – Query Web Service (Loosely typed)

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Application Integration Framework –

Query Web Service (Loosely typed)

Purpose: The purpose of this document is to illustrate how to use Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 AIF Query AIF Web Service in integration scenarios for different types of custom data.

Challenge: Data model changes in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 related to high normalization and introduction of surrogate keys made some integrations more complex. In fact the process of custom AIF Web Service creation remains the same. However in the case when you need to retrieve (read) different (may be even similar) types of custom data with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 you may end up creating different dedicated AIF Web Services which increases development effort.

Solution: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 out-of-the-box ships with number of AIF Web Services which can be used in integration scenarios. In this simple example I'm going to retrieve (read) Vendor groups information from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 by means of external .NET application. Please note that there is no Vendor groups AIF Web Service in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 out-of-the-box. In this walkthrough I'll demonstrate how to use Query AIF Web Service in order to retrieve (read) different types of custom data such as Vendor groups from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 by means of C#.NET Console application without creating a dedicated AIF Web Service from scratch. Similar logic can be used to retrieve (read) other types of custom data from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 using Query AIF Web Service. 

Data Model:

Table Name	Table Description
VendGroup	The VendGroup table contains definitions of vendor groups.

Data Model Diagram:

Please note that I'm going to retrieve (read) Vendor groups information from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 by means of external .NET application and I only want to read 2 fields: VendGroup and Name

Walkthrough:

Query AIF Web Service (QueryService) is the system Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 AIF Web Service which can be used in integration scenarios to retrieve (read) the data. More information about Query AIF Web Service can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg847959.aspx

Please note that there is no need to create a Service group and do Inbound port setup for Query AIF Web Service. This is because the system services such as Query AIF Web Service are automatically installed as part of the setup process and are always available.

As a next step you can consume Query AIF Web Service from .NET application by adding Service reference to it.

Service reference

Please note that QueryService AIF Web Service exposes executeQuery operation which will be used to retrieve (read) information about Vendor groups information from Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Source code

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Data; using ConsoleApplication1.ServiceReference1; namespace ConsoleApplication1 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             QueryServiceClient client = new QueryServiceClient();                       QueryMetadata query = new QueryMetadata();             query.DataSources = new QueryDataSourceMetadata[1];             query.Name = "VendGroup";             QueryDataSourceMetadata queryDS = new QueryDataSourceMetadata();             queryDS.Name = "VendGroup";                        queryDS.Table = "VendGroup";             queryDS.Enabled = true;             query.DataSources[0] = queryDS;             queryDS.DynamicFieldList = false;             queryDS.Fields = new QueryDataFieldMetadata[2];             QueryDataFieldMetadata fieldVendGroup = new QueryDataFieldMetadata();             fieldVendGroup.FieldName = "VendGroup";            fieldVendGroup.SelectionField = SelectionField.Database;             queryDS.Fields[0] = fieldVendGroup;            QueryDataFieldMetadata fieldName = new QueryDataFieldMetadata();             fieldName.FieldName = "Name";             fieldName.SelectionField = SelectionField.Database;             queryDS.Fields[1] = fieldName;                         Paging paging = new ValueBasedPaging() { RecordLimit = 25 };                         try             {                 DataSet dataset = client.ExecuteQuery(query, ref paging);                 for (int i = 0; i < dataset.Tables[0].Rows.Count; i++)                 {                     DataRow datarow = dataset.Tables[0].Rows[i];                     Console.WriteLine(datarow[0].ToString() + ":" + datarow[1].ToString());                 }                           Console.WriteLine("Done!");             }             catch (Exception e)             {                 Console.WriteLine("Error:" + e.Message);                   }             Console.ReadLine();         }     } }

Result:

.NET Console application – Vendor groups

Summary: For the purposes of relatively simple integration scenarios Query AIF Web Service in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 can be used to retrieve (read) the information for different types of custom data without creating dedicated AIF Web Services. For example, in order to retrieve (read) the information about Customer groups and Vendor groups information with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 from external .NET application Query AIF Web Service may be used which allows for dynamic, loosely typed integration scenarios. As the result at run time external .NET application may just supply different query corresponding to Customer group or Vendor group metadata while calling the same executeQuery operation on Query AIF Web Service. Please note that for complex integration scenarios when it is required to retrieve (read) the information based on complex query with a lot of filtering and sorting it's recommended to use dedicated AIF Web Services which increases code readability and facilitates maintenance effort.

Author: Alex Anikiev, PhD, MCP

Tags: Microsoft Dynamics ERP, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, Integration, Application Integration Framework, Custom Data, Query AIF Web Service.

Note: This document is intended for information purposes only, presented as it is with no warranties from the author. This document may be updated with more content to better outline the concepts and describe the examples.