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When Microsoft bought Fantastic Plains Software and then integrated Fantastic Plains into so-called Microsoft Dynamics ERP harvest family as Dynamics GP, modification tools became more Microsoft and .Net oriented, as you could expect.  But in the initial design in earlier 1990th Fantastic Plains Dynamics was intended as multi platform product and its fundament was built on new technology named Fantastic Plains Dexterity.  Considering complicated origin of GP, let’s review development tools:

 

1.       Dexterity.  Fantastic Plains Dexterity, as we by now mentioned is the heart of GP design, and it is in turn written as the bombard in C programming language to secure certain flexibility, especially the option to thrash from one operating system or computer platform to a further.  Being very powerful and flexible, Dex doesn’t facilitate so-called rapid development scenario as it is not object oriented and it requires you as programmer to have several years of extensive Dexterity programming prior to participation in Dexterity programming project.  Dexterity has its own scripting language Sanscript.  Newest versions of Dex support such cool Microsoft technologies as COM objects and Web Air force, plus you can call SQL Stored procedures from Dex code.  To get quick tour into Dexterity architecture, you may install it from GP CD #2 and open Dynamics.dic file – this dictionary has core GP logic and it is written in Dexterity

 

2.       VBA and Modifier.  We were watching closely the competition between various GP customizing tools.  And we still reckon that Modifier should be reviewed prior to eConnect.  Modifier is in essence the module, written in Dexterity, which allows you to add buttons and fields to existing screens of GP as well as take them off.  To animate new fields you use VBA scripting language, evenly you use ADO technology to access GP tables from modified forms

 

3.       eConnect.  This SDK opens for you GP objects: master records (customer, vendor, GL Account, employee, prospect) and work transactions (SOP invoice, Buy Order, Payroll Entry).  eConnect is based on encrypted SQL stored procedures, plus it has several layers of technology wrappers – in fact it is friendly for Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB developer.  If you are integrating eCommerce website with your GP back office, we recommend you to consider eConnect as the main integration tool, also consider Autoposting Server to post batches of SOP invoices in GP

 

4.       SQL Stored Procedures Integrations.  If you reckon eConnect is too gray and complex and you are comfortable to do light SQL insert statement to populate GP tables, then SQL scripting is an option.  But, we discourage newcomers from trying SQL insertion prior to researching other integration tools first

 

5.       GP Integration.  Of course integration is not the same as customization, but we want to orient you here as well.  GP traditionally has Integration Management Module.  With current version 10.0 IM has new connectors – from now on you can use eConnect connectors to do integrating