SAP Business One Customization Recovery or when is the time to get second opinion

Jul 13
07:32

2012

Andrew Karasev

Andrew Karasev

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Business One is known as flexible ERP system where you can add user defined objects directly in settings without programming. These customizations are ‘bullet proof’ and immune to such future events as version upgrades.

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However you may need programmed logic associated with user defined tables and fields and this is where you typically appeal to Microsoft Visual Studio C# or VB programming with Software Development Kit.  Software development by its nature has high risk of all kinds of ‘bugs’,SAP Business One Customization Recovery or when is the time to get second opinion Articles coder learning curve as well as the lack of Quality Assurance in the case of unique project.  In this small publication we would like to give you advices regarding SAP B1 SDK and possible second opinion.  It is written in FAQ style for ‘easy reading’:

Q.  We contracted programmer who is perfect in Delphi and he decided to use this tool for SDK coding.  Is Delphi a right way to take?A.  Experienced programmer can use Delphi.  Here we are assuming the ability to read code sample in SAP BO SDK which are available in VB and C#.  Modern software development is based on ‘read sample code and apply it to your project’.  In our opinion preferable tool is Microsoft Visual Studio and such languages as C# or VB.Net where you can simply ‘copy and paste’ code snippets from Software Development Kit.  In earlier 1990th we used to program in Borland Pascal which was later one rebranded as Delphi so we are comfortable to support and further improve several customizations originally designed in Delphi

Q.  Our contractor reported that project is about to be finished.  However doing our QA we figured out that data is compromised and the code contains multiple calls to SQL Stored Procedures hosted in company database.  Is it something to be considered as ‘normal’?A.  SDK guidelines do not recommend custom SQL stored procedures and calling them from the project.  There might be two reasons why.  First reason is possible ‘learning curve’ as your technician might be experienced SQL DBA but beginner with C# and Business One objects structure.  And the second reason might be slow performance of custom code.  It might be a good idea to pay for several hours of consultancy to somebody who is SDK ‘guru’.  And by the way if poor performance is your case then be sure that you are using DI Server (XML format) and not DLL libraries (direct login and document creation in SDK code)

Q.  We think that we are ready to appeal to ‘second opinion’.  What kind of information should we have on hand while calling to competition?A.  It is important to have source code (C# or VB or whatever was the language).  Software coding nature doesn’t allow crack EXE file and get source for future modification.  There is wide spread practice among programmers to put the clause into contract that code is the property of software developer.  So please try do not get trapped into this problem

Q.  We do not have source code and we are curious if you could still help us?A.  We are open to discuss.  The reality is that if project failed then scripts might be poorly designed (learning curve factor or something else) and they should be recoded from scratch

Please call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, help@efaru.com.  We have local presence in Chicagoland, Atlanta Georgia, Southwest Michigan. We serve customers USA and Canada nationwide and internationally via web sessions and phone conferences (Skype is welcomed).  We are working on Brazilian ERP consulting market in Sao Paulo since 2004