Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Registering .Net library for calling from X++

Hi All,

We are facing a deployment question while registering a .Net dll for consumption from X++ in Dynamics AX 2012.

We have a central AOS server and all users are accessing using AX clients from different machines. We have created a custom .Net dll. In order to register we go to AX Client of developer -> AOT -> References and then browse the dll. The browser opens the Dynamics Client\Bin directory on the AX Client machine. So it seems the dll needs to be present on the Client\Bin directory of local AX installation on the machine where Client is loaded and not the main AOS server. So if there are 10 users using the application who need to be accessing the dll functionality from X++ code from their AX Client, it seems all the 10 users need to have the dll locally present in their Client\bin folder.

This seems not right to me, because ideally having the dll centrally on the AOS server machine and referencing from there should have been enough. But that is not happening because then the code doesn't compile in the client machines.

Can some please advice me on the right way to register a .Net dll for a Dynamics AX 2012 application?

Regards

Shas

So, location of the DLL depends on the usage of course. If the code using the DLL runs server side, you only need it on the AOS. If you need it on client, you need it on client, and of course if you're doing both you need the DLL on both.

That being said, the reference you add could come from anywhere. It doesn't matter where you point the reference to, it will just pick up the assembly information. So in reality, the client would need the DLL any place the framework or AX will look for it. The folder of the executing process is always the default location to look for a dll (for AX, client/bin) but you could also place the DLL in the GAC. Additionally, AX will also look for DLLs in the user's %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Dynamics AX\VSAssemblies folder (this is technically for VS AOT projects as I described here: daxmusings.codecrib.com/.../ax-2012-net-assembly-deployment.html ) so you could deploy DLLs there for each user if you want.

If you want to auto-deploy DLLs automatically, I've been blogging about this recently. There are two ways, one officially supported, one somewhat of a hack. Unfortunately the hack-way works better :-)

daxmusings.codecrib.com/.../auto-deploying-dlls-and-other-resources.html

Part 2 for the "official" deployment will be up in the next few days at the latest.

As for compiling, you'll always want to compile from one machine that has all the DLLs needed (i prefer from a box that even has SSRS/SSAS/SharePoint assemblies so there are no warnings anywhere in the compile).

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