Microsoft Great Plains - EDI integration scenarios, e-commerce

Microsoft Dynamics GP, successor of Great Plains Software Dynamics and eEnterprise is very popular ERP platform, deployed as Back Office Accounting, and integrated with various business systems. Among the most typical scenarios of GP MRP integration are Electronic Document Interface EDI and eCommerce. Consider and compare the methodologies, integration and software development tools, programming techniques and customization options

1. EDI. Electronic Document Interchange is relatively matured technology and typically it is realized in the form of a fixed length text file or text streams. Newer approach may consider new generation of similar to EDI in concept XML streams. When talking about GP, we should expect two types of EDI integrations - when you are vendor (in this case you receive EDI formatted either Sales Orders Processing orders or invoices or accounts receivables invoices), and when you are a customer (in Here you place EDI purchase orders to your suppliers). From a technological standpoint, EDI is not very difficult in standard and even custom realization and programming. Microsoft Dynamics GP, starting with version 8.0, is the only supported DB platform - Microsoft SQL Server. The current version of Microsoft Great Plains is 10.0, available on MS SQL Server 2005 or 2000. You program EDI streams with SQL SELECT command and you format text fields with cast or convert constructions. When you import external EDI streams you, is when you create SOP Invoices, you should consider using eConnect

2. eCommerce. If you're a programmer e-commerce, please invest your time in eConnect technology learning. You probably heard about eConnect and about the fact that it was originally dedicated to e-commerce software developers. We would like to sort of spread eConnect and say this - if you do the integration of e-commerce from scratch, you must feed the eCommerce orders and invoices in GP tables: SOP10100, SOP10200. However, you should know that eConnect already has done this work for you in ECONNECT business objects - encrypted stored procedures. There are several situations where you should break ECONNECT restrictions. The first is the fact that eConnect replicates Dexterity business logic (DYNAMICS.DIC is Microsoft Dexterity dictionary, where they kept all the core modules business logic) and even trusting astonishing SQL Server performance, you can still have concerns that eConnect might be a bit 'slow, if you transactions volume crosses thousand records per session. If eConnect performance is in question, you may consider doing simplified integration in SQL stored procedures to insert logic. The limitation is the absence of second eConnect posting logic - in order to post SOP batches you will need to deploy server Albaspectrum posting ....