Customer Reviews

Dynamics AX: A Guide to Microsoft Axapta

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

At first glance the book looks very impressive and promising; however you don't have to read many pages before the cold truth of the authors' dilemma hits you. Covering a product as huge as Axapta in less than 500 pages is impossible, so choosing the right level of detail is vital. The authors chose the same approach as the online documentation shipping with the product. They describe in a clear and easy digestible language the most important forms in great detail. The online documentation has rightfully been accused of not providing procedural information (Step-by-step descriptions of how to accomplish tasks spanning multiple forms) or overview information (How everything ties together). Unfortunately this book does not provide that information either. Since the page count is limited one could have hoped non-trivial information was prioritized. That isn't the case. This book is however more than just a rewrite of the online documentation. It contains many valuable and interesting insights where appropriate. Don't expect this book to give you a lot of new information; but it gives you the opportunity to bring it all to the beach.

The content in the book is fairly accurate, and fairly complete. If you are new to Axapta it will help you, if you already are somewhat familiar with the product, the technical inaccuracies and missing key information may throw you off track. An example of missing key information is in the X++ chapter. Here both transaction and exception handling are well described in sequent subchapters. However not a word is mentioned on how they interact, which is something every X++ developer needs to understand to write business logic. Hopefully this and many similar issues will be ironed out in a revised edition.

The architecture chapter is quite a disappointment to me, as it mostly describes deployment scenarios and lists the files that come with the product. The chapters on development and X++ will not teach you to be an Axapta developer. Just like reading a car's manual won't teach you how to drive. In the book there are no examples of business code, but a lot of screenshots and descriptions of the MorphX toolbox. The structure and contents of the development chapters makes me wonder if the authors ever used MorphX themselves.

The book has an edge towards Microsoft, which at times is mind-opening, but mostly plain ignorant. At times it seems more focused on finding ways to crash the system, than ways to successfully avoid the crashes.

By the way: Don't be tricked by the book's title. The book is about Axapta version 3.0 released in 2002. "Dynamics AX" is the name of version 4.0 scheduled to release in 2006.

It would have saved me a lot of time, effort and pain if I had had this book when I started. It's easy for anyone to read and follow with and covers almost everything with enough depth to get you going. I would like to see more on development.

This is a great book to get started with that gives you a full overview of Axapta, including installation, the essential business functionality, administration and development. Good set of appendixes for reference. If you are experienced in you area you should be able to figure out whatever you need once you have read the book. Even experienced users will benefit from reading the chapters they don't normally work with.

I'm an experienced JD Edwards consultant moving to Axapta and I have not found it easy even after going, or better trying to go through the existing documentation referred by some of the other reviewers. Reading the book was easy and by far the best investment of time and money I have made in Axapta, and I now feel comfortable that I can take it to the next level by myself. Thanks for the book.

It is nice to see some books on Axapta finally coming out. This is a solid book with alot of information on Axapta. I would classify this book as a detailed overview of Axapta directed mostly at system administrators, developers and Axapta consultants. It is a great starting point if you are new to Axapta.

Although the authors in the intro state end users can use this book most of the material is going to be a little deep for them. The chapters on end user functionality are okay but limited. But alot of ground is covered in a relatively concise manner. Good job. I didn't give it 5 stars because I would have liked to seem more information on application class and table structures of Axapta.

This is the authoritative guide on Microsoft Axapta. This book will send you on a self-guided journey into the "best practices" of installing and configuring Axapta. The authors have done a remarkable job of presenting a lot of content in a very easy to understand fashion. My hat is off to the authors.

I never write reviews and the main reason for doing so is the negative reviews I have seen here.

There is no other book or document on Axapta that provides the scope, comprehensiveness and ease of reading you will find in this book. I have been working with Axapta for quite a few years as a developer and consultant and I picked up stuff and found it to be an inexpensive way of refreshing a variety of topics that I don't deal with on a daily basis.

If you want to go deeper then this you will have to attend training, and development alone with four modules will set you back that many times 1k USD, so it's hard to beat the book on value for money.

Said that, I would really like to see books that pick up where this one leaves off and develop the different topics in detail, especially development. There are obviously a few people out there with a lot of knowledge and I would like to encourage them to share it with us and write a book.

I am prompted to write this review owing to the number of negative comments I have seen. I personally read the book and I found it very informative and easy to understand. Axapta is a huge application and it is not very easy to understand, just as how math is a huge and deep topic. However, learning math helps if you understand the fundamental topics. If you miss the fundamentals God help you.

I said this to say that this book is not for the experts who are looking for something deep, it opens your eyes to the fundamentals and gives you a base to start with. I am a self learner and I find a lot of the materials for Axapta hard to grasp if you do not understand the fundamentals. This book indeed opened my understanding to a great extent and some of the things that I already understood I believe were clearly explained. If you are just starting out with Axapta this book is a great place to start.

I spent weeks agonizing through the product documentation and various web sites and it didn't get me anywhere near where this book got me in days. I wish the book had been published a little earlier, and hope to see some books now exploring the different topics covered in the book in detail.

Well, any dax related book is welcomed since we don't have many.
It's not that the books is bad for its purpose, but like the other negative reviewers say, it's just a general overview book that is not enough to scrape the surface of it and that is the truth. Someone should come up with sceries of books that concentrate on a module at a time.

So, if you are expecting too much and in a situation of doing dirty practical hands-on stuffs...working with MorphX and X++ through the maze of classes, data dics, forms, etc, you shouldn't expect too much from it.