Probably by now you would have come across this link announcing the book titled "Inside Microsoft Dynamics™ AX 4.0".
After two books on Axapta, this is going to be third one and most importantly directly from Microsoft! And naturally since I read about this book I was very curious to learn more about this book - in particular the contents and the people behind this endeavour.
And thanks to Melissa, I got this fantastic opportunity to hook up with one of the authors - Michael Fruergaard Pontoppidan! I have given the Q&A that I had with Michael below -
Harish:
I notice that there are four authors including your good self. If possible could you kindly let me know detailed background of you all please? In particular - years of Axapta experience, expertise details etc
Michael:
Actually the list of authors has grown since the original book outline. We are now 10 authors. Also, we have the fortune to work with Mette Nyberg as our project manager, and a professional staff of editors and designers at MS Press. These are the author biographies that will print in the book:
Arthur Greef is a software architect on the Microsoft Dynamics AX team at the Microsoft Development Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. Prior to working in this position in Denmark, he worked on the Microsoft Business Network product team that was part of bCentral in Redmond. Before he joined Microsoft in 1991, Arthur was chief architect at Edifecs, a small company that developed the XML business collaboration protocols for the RosettaNet Consortium, a standards organization for the information technology industry. He also held the position of chief architect for two years at the RosettaNet Consortium. During this time, he was on executive loan from IBM, where he worked on e-commerce Web catalog and sales configuration products. Arthur has a BSc and an MSc in mechanical engineering from the University of Natal in South Africa, he has a PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Stellenbosh in South Africa, and he spent two years in an industrial engineering post-doctoral program at the University of North Carolina in the United States. Arthur has a passion for delivering innovative technology to mid-market manufacturing and distribution companies who need to manage their supply chains and who need to plan, schedule, and control their production and logistics activities.
Hans Jorgen Skovgaard joined Microsoft in 2003 as product unit manager for the Microsoft Dynamics AX product line. As part of Microsoft’s Navision acquisition process, Hans facilitated and managed the introduction of engineering excellence initiatives, aligned developer competence, created new teams, and organized training for new developers. Hans joined Microsoft with more than 20 years of professional software development and management experience. Prior to his engagement with Microsoft Dynamics AX, Hans was vice president of engineering at Mondosoft, a search engine company, for three years. Before that, he was vice president of CRM development in the ERP company Baan for 10 years, during which time he architected a product configuration technology and associated tools. Hans has an MSc in AI (artificial intelligence) and an MBA from IMD, one of the world’s leading business schools. Hans lives in Denmark with his wife, Nomi, and his three lovely daughters, Ristil, Simone, and Mikala. He holds a black belt in karate and is an avid mountain biker.
Thomas Due Kay is a program manager who joined Damgaard Data in 1997. In addition to program management, he has worked in various product areas such as product management, support engineering, and product quality management. For Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, he was involved in the development of version control integration, Microsoft Visio Unified Modeling Language add-on integration, user interface brush-up, re-branding, and many other technology-oriented features. He has also been deeply involved in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing effort. He is a frequent speaker at customer and technical briefings, conferences, and other road shows. Thomas lives in Denmark with his wife, Theresa, and his two sons, Marcus and Lucas.
Michael Fruergaard Pontoppidan joined Damgaard Data in 1996 as a software design engineer on the MorphX team, delivering the developer experience for the first release of Microsoft Dynamics AX after graduating from DTU (Technical University of Denmark). In 1999, he became the program manager and lead developer for the Application Integration and Deployment team that delivered on the Load ’n Go vision. For version 4.0, he worked as a software architect on version control, unit testing, and Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative, while advocating code quality improvements through Engineering Excellence, tools, processes, and training. He has been a highly rated and frequent speaker at technical briefings, conferences, and other road shows. Michael lives in Denmark with his wife, Katrine, and their daughter, Laura.
Lars Dragheim Olsen joined Damgaard Data in 1998 as a software design engineer for the Internet and Trade team. This was shortly after the first version of Microsoft Dynamics AX was released. While continuing his development work, he has since also held positions as program manager and project manager. His work has mainly focused on the Supply Chain Management modules within Dynamics AX and the integration of these modules with other modules, such as Financials and Project. During the development of version 4.0, he worked as a software architect, focused primarily on optimizing performance within the Supply Chain Management modules. Before working for Damgaard Data, Navision, and Microsoft, he worked for seven years as a system consultant on another ERP product. He lives in Denmark with his three children, Daniel, Christian, and Isabella, and his girlfriend, Camilla.
Bjorn Moller Pedersen works at thy:development, a Microsoft partner specialized in skills transfer related to development in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Bjorn joined Damgaard Data in 1990 as an application developer, so he has in-depth knowledge of the Dynamics AX application. He played an important part in the development of Concorde XAL from the first version and beyond, and he was later heavily involved in the transition from Concorde XAL to Dynamics AX. Since 1997, he has trained and coached Microsoft Dynamics partners in Dynamics AX. His focus is development, including quality assurance activities. Bjorn has an MSc degree in business administration, accountancy, and auditing.
Palle Agermark joined Microsoft as an application developer in 2003 after spending more than 10 years in the ERP industry specializing in Concorde XAL and Microsoft Dynamics AX solutions. Palle works on the Control team and has primarily worked with the General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable feature areas. For Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, Palle worked as a developer in the following areas: unit testing, payment proposal, dimension hierarchy, the Financial Dimension Wizard, EU-115 Sales Tax Directive, and audit trail. Palle lives in Denmark with his wife, Rikke, and daughter, Andrea.
Mey Meenakshisundaram is a program manager on the Microsoft Dynamics product team who focuses on the Enterprise Portal. He has 14 years of experience in software engineering, consulting, and management, the last 5 of which were spent at Microsoft. Prior to his current role, he led the engineering team that developed and implemented the portal, content management, and sales operations systems for Microsoft Global Sales teams. He lives in Sammamish, Washington, with his wife, Amutha, and his children, Meena and Shammu. Mey regularly posts blog entries at http://blogs.msdn.com/solutions
Per Baarsoe Jorgensen joined Damgaard Data in 1998 as a software design engineer for the Financials team, and he has delivered content for all releases of Microsoft Dynamics AX ever since. Over the years, he has held positions as team lead and lead developer for the Financials team. For version 4.0, he worked as lead developer on two teams that delivered the Alerts and Integration framework functionality. He has been a frequent speaker at Microsoft on Dynamics AX feature area implementations. He has more than 20 years of development experience; prior to his work with Dynamics AX, he was a development consultant for more than 10 years. Per lives in Denmark with his wife, Jeanette, and their two lovely daughters, Karoline and Natascha.
Karl Tolgu is a program manager for Microsoft Dynamics. He is responsible for the delivery of a variety of platform features in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Previously, Karl worked on project accounting modules in Microsoft Dynamics SL and Microsoft Dynamics GP. He has worked in the software industry in both the UK and the United States since graduating. He has held various software development management positions at Oracle Corporation and Niku Corporation. Karl resides in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Karin, and three sons, Karl Christian, Sten Alexander, and Thomas Sebastian.
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Harish: In order to get an idea / flavor about this book - is it possible for me to publish the table of contents or perhaps a sample chapter at all please?
Michael:
This is the table of contents: Feel free to publish it. Regarding sample chapters, unfortunately I cannot share any with you at this point.
| Introduction |
| Foreword |
| Acknowledgement |
| Part I |
A Tour of the Development Environment |
| 1 |
Architectural Overview |
| 2 |
MorphX Development Environment |
| 3 |
MorphX Designers |
| 4 |
MorphX Development Tools |
| 5 |
The X++ Programming Language |
| Part II |
Developing with Axapta |
| 6 |
Customizing Dynamics Ax |
| 7 |
Extending Dynamics Ax |
| 8 |
Developing Applications Using Business Connector |
| 9 |
XML Document Integration |
| Part III |
Under the Hood |
| 10 |
Enterprise Portal |
| 11 |
Configuration and Security |
| 12 |
The Database layer |
| 13 |
Advanced MorphX Forms |
| 14 |
Reflection |
| 15 |
System Classes |
| 16 |
Unit testing |
| 17 |
Performance |
| 18 |
Upgrades and Data Migration |
Michael (Contd.): As you can see in the TOC, the book is in 3 parts. They are all published in the same volume. Besides the book, there will be created a web site on MS Press containing downloadable code samples from the book. The URL is not available yet.
Harish: How long have you been working on this book?
Michael: The idea of writing a book was conceived about 2 years ago. The initial kick off meeting was held in May 2005. The actual content writing began in September 2005.
Harish: Are there any other info that you would like to share about this book please?
Michael:Finding the right level of depth and prerequisites for the book was a main priority. It was clear we wanted to write about the internals of Dynamics AX, and we wanted the audience to be developers – not necessarily with Dynamics AX experience. However we did not want to publish an alternative version of the Dynamics AX SDK (aka Developer’s Guide). For this reason we go quite light in areas that are well covered in Dynamics AX SDK, while still providing enough background information to make the chapters coherent. For example, the Introduction to MorphX chapter describes the element types and their relationships on a high level, without going into the nitty-gritty details of each element type and its properties. Another example is the Performance chapter which is very detailed in the book; but quite shallow in the Dynamics AX SDK. We felt the pages we had available was better spent complementing the Dynamics AX SDK, rather than duplicating it. ???On prerequisites we target developers. We do require OO knowledge, but not: business domain, X++ or MorphX knowledge. The book can be used to rapidly become an efficient Dynamics AX developer, if you are a skilled C#, C++, VB or Java developer. Having said this, it is important to stress, that the book does not cover business domain implementation details - it will only teach you the technical skills.
Even as a Dynamics AX expert, I’ve learned a lot from the book writing process. Reviewing my co-authors contents has broadened my AX knowledge beyond my expectations. After reviewing individual chapters, I’ve had a feeling that the chapter alone fully justifies the price tag on the book.
-End-
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