Saturday, January 28, 2017

Optimizing installing ISV solutions in AX 2012 (Compare Tool)

When integrating a comprehensive ISV solution into your AX environment there is always the possibility that there is a conflict: perhaps the ISV solution was built for a different version of AX, or you already have several other solutions installed.  This means spending significant hours comparing objects, almost to the point that you could have coded the ISV solution yourself, LOL!

How can we make this process faster?  How can we optimize it?

Right click > Compare, click compare button, expand, expand...expand, expand, click, review, scroll...repeat 100 times.

Modifications to AX Compare Tool-
The first thing I noticed is that when I hit compare, the screen is so tiny that I'm constantly resizing it.
Modify the following to support the resolution you are using:  \Forms\SysCompareForm.init()
For my 4k monitor I found that using 600 by 900 enabled me to see as much code as possible.  So I added:

html.prefColumnSize(600, 900);
Tree.prefColumnSize(300, 900); // wider by 100px

You can also modify which two layers it immediately chooses.  In the past I have changed it so that the washed "layer" was never selected.

Also you could consider running the comparison in CIL.  It sounds great, however read it carefully because the generated code may not be what you expect.

The compare tool as it comes with AX already sets focus on the Compare button, so hitting enter will cause it to start the compare.  However you could modify the form to automatically hit the compare button after a second, saving you a few milliseconds.

What other hacks/tricks have you done to speed up this process?  Let me know in the comments.

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