Hello all--
I am developing a .NET web service in Visual Studio 2008 that makes use of the AX 4.0 Business Connector as a reference. (The host OS is XP SP3.)
I am seeing some strange behavior when I attempt to re-point the business connector at a different AOS (for testing in dev, QA, production -- all 3 are backed by different databases and hosted on physically distinct machines). No change to the target AOS seems to occur at all, no matter what profile I use. To make it a bit more concrete:
Step 1: I open the AX client configuration utility, choose "Business connector" at the top.
Step 2: I select a pre-saved configuration for our dev server (let's call it AOSDEV).
Step 3: I open Visual Studio, run my web service in debug mode, manually force a refresh on the Axapta object used by the service, and attempt a write operation. It succeeds as expected - the correct data is altered.
Step 4: I close Visual Studio, and re-perform steps 1 and 2, instead choosing a profile for our QA server (let's call it AOSQA).
Step 5: I repeat step 3, but, using the interactive Dynamics client, I see that the write operation I've performed has actually made a change to AOSDEV, and not AOSQA.
Steps 4 and 5 are the same no matter what AOS I choose (aside from the dev instance) - the changes are written to the original AOSDEV. I should mention that this behavior persists between reboots.
The only hitch I see here is the web service I'm debugging in VS impersonates an AD user
dedicated to non-interactive Dynamics sessions. Running the AX client
configuration utility as this user and altering the active profile
doesn't solve this problem, however - apparently the business connector profiles are stored in HKLM in the registry, so all users see the same list from the same machine.
In speaking with a lead dev here, he mentioned that occasionally he'll have to (on production IIS machines running the same web service code I'm debugging in VS) manually edit registry values to ensure this change happens.
For others having similar problems: the correct keys to edit are in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Dynamics\4.0\Configuration (search this tree for the aos hostname).
This hack works for now, but... it's pretty far from ideal.
Surely I'm missing something here, and the AX client configuration utility should in fact be changing the target AOS for the business connector...?
Any and all help is very welcome, with thanks in advance.