Search This Blog

15 January 2011

Specific order of fields in Aif messages

Aif-messages require the data to be defined in a specific order. This is why in the schema file, the Aif data-types (declared as complex types) are declared with the xs:sequence indicator:

Example from the DirAddressService:
...

    
      
      
            ...
    
    
    
  
...

This is particularly surprising, as the elements in an entity are always ordered alphabetically... :-\

Aif message header editor (reloaded)

I blogged some weeks ago about my very simple tool to change Aif header-information in Xml-files. (Article deleted)
I reviewed the code and made it now usable "as is". So it is now more then just a proof of concept :-) The project is hosted on CodePlex under the new GNU license (so that you can do whatever you like to do with the code without restrictions).
This tool makes it now possible to modify the content of the Aif-message and to change the file-owner, which is used by Aif to authenticate messages by comparing the file-owner with the source endpoint user.
The tool has a graphical user interface and a simple comand-line interface, so that you can include this tool in scripts which makes it easier to automize creating messages.
The Guid looks like this:
It is very easy to use: just open the valid Xml-file with the "..."-button. If the Xml-files are associated with this tool, a double-click will work, too. Then choose your destination directory. This will be probably the directory that you configured for the incoming messages in Dynamics Ax and choose the same user for the file owner and the "source endpoint user". The Aif authenticates the Aif-user by comparing the "source endpoint user" in the header with the document owner.
A new functionality is the command-line interface:

Type "-help" for a simple "how-to" use this tool and include this in your cmd-script for an automized file-creation...

This tool is provided "as-is", and nobody (including me), will be responsable for any damage this tool might cause... ;-)

Please feel free to report any issues on the project homepage or just drop me a mail.