Third Party Software Integration through Webservices

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I am looking for the approach to integrate any third party software with AX 2012.

If any sales related postings or any status updates are happening in any Third Party Software , the statuses should change in AX . The Database of Third party software may be SQL or not. What could be the solution to handle this . I am Confused with the options like

1.AIF,

2.WCF,

3.Existing Standard Services,

4.ODBC(I am not sure wether i have purchase any license for this),

5.XML(Not recommended by customer) &

6.Representation State Transfer & Connectivity Studio.

Please suggest the links or with procedure so that i can go with any of the oprtions out of(1,2,3 &6) or is there any other solution to handle this requirement.

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Faisal Fareed 10,796 User Group Leader on at

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RE: Third Party Software Integration through Webservices

Hi Raghu,

AIF would be best option for you to integrate with AX and there are some standard document services available in AX and for your business reuqirements you can always create custom services.

technet.microsoft.com/.../gg731810.aspx

technet.microsoft.com/.../bb496530.aspx

the second also has the list of all available document services in AX.

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Martin Dráb 236,297 Most Valuable Professional on at

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RE: Third Party Software Integration through Webservices

You're mixing many different terms. Let me start with explaining what they mean.

AIF is the Application Integration Framework in Dynamics AX. It supports web services, file-based communication and so on, and a plenty of related features, such as logging, transformation, configuration etc.

WCF is Windows Communication Foundation, a part of .NET framework. Web services used by AX internally utilize WCF.

AX offers several types of services: document services, custom services and system services. Document services and custom services can be exposed using AIF.

ODBC, Open Database Connectivity, is an API for accessing various kind of databases.

XML is a data format.

Representation State Transfer (REST) is a pattern for designing web services.

Connectivity Studio is a third-party extension for Dynamics AX.

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Vilmos Kintera 46,149 on at

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RE: Third Party Software Integration through Webservices

It depends on what the other party can do.

If they are able to make a call from their application when the data should also change in AX, you should definitely use Application Integration Framework with an Inbound port. That could be either Document services, or Custom endpoint for more complex update scenarios. This is considered to be a "push" from their end. AIF is WCF-based communication using XMLs, so I do not really understand many of the options listed there, since they are redundant. Maybe the only exception is the XML where you could have meant something like a BizTalk Server integration, which ultimately still connects to AX via AIF in the end, but then why implement it in the first place?

If they cannot do such things for integrations, then you need to "pull" the information. For this you would need some sort of tracking of changes in their SQL database or application, to be able to initiate the data pull.

I am sure you can find dozens of examples on blogs, and also the Microsoft documentation is very detaild and there are whitepapers as well, if you use a searcch engine of your choice.

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KingswaySoft 545 on at

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RE: Third Party Software Integration through Webservices

Hi Raghu,

You can take a look at our AX data integration solution. It offer a flexible, easy to use and codeless data integration solution built on SSIS so you can integrate with virtually any other application or database system. Our AX data integration solution is part of our 365 solution (includes components for integrating AX, CRM & NAV) but supports connecting to AX 2012 using the Business Connector.

Regards,

KingswaySoft

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