Release Notes LS Retail Data Director August 2011

Transcription

1 Release Notes LS Retail Data Director August 2011 Copyright , LS Retail. All rights reserved. All trademarks belong to their respective holders.

2 Contents 1 Introduction What s New? Why only one DD Service? Supported Operating Environments Supported Databases Supported Backend Systems Installing Data Director Update DD2 to DD What if I have problems? Improvements and Bug Fixes Fixed CFront Crash on close connection Fixed Field Class Data in Read Field Design Status Check can be done on Jobs with status None Automatic Status check Fixed null Date and Blob transfer via TransAutomClient General fixes FAQ and Known Issues NAV in languages other than English My test connection doesn t work, I get error Release Track Hofdatorg 2, 105 Reykjavík, Iceland Tel: Fax:

3 1 Introduction The Data Director is a product of LS Retail ehf, the developers of the LS Retail Back Office system and the LS POS point-of-sale application. The Data Director is closely tied to these applications and plays an integral part in enabling the system to function as a whole in a distributed environment. The Data Director is an application specialized in moving data between databases in a fast and efficient way. It works intimately with the Microsoft Dynamics NAV and AX platforms but it is not limited to those platforms. It can just as easily move data between other databases such as MS SQL Server. Generally, if the database supports the Microsoft ADO interface the Data Director should be able to use it. The Data Director is a flexible tool that can be adapted to a variety of data transfer scenarios. The most commonly used configurations are for: Moving data between the head-office, stores and Point-of-Sale Terminals (POS Terminals) in a Dynamics NAV based retail organization. Moving data from Dynamics NAV based databases into a data warehouse running on Microsoft SQL Server. Chapter 1 - Introduction 1

4 1.1 What s New? NOTE: Data Director 3.01.xx is not compatible with DD 3.00.xx. All locations running DD 3.00.xx needs to be updated. This is due to changes in Data File format that is sent between hosts. Data Director 3 (DD3) is totally rewritten from scratch, but based on the functionality of older DD versions. Because of this we are open to any new features that you may think could benefit future releases. There are no Incoming / Outgoing tables to control the jobs. All job information is stored in the memory of the Router and backup is stored in the work folders with the Job Data, so all modification of Jobs status needs to be done via the Job Monitor that comes with the DD install. You can only run one DD Service on each Host, and behind the scenes you will see in the Task Manager that there are few DDxxxxx Processes running instead on one DBServer. See 1.2 for more details on this. DD3 does not use special DD Service Names. It will work on the computer host name, but you can assign host aliases so if a Job is assigned to those aliases, the DD will process that job. DD3 will be able to communicate with Data Director 2 (DD2) and vice versa. When replicating from DD3 to DD3 you will be able to use the Job Monitor tool to monitor the job statuses, but if you are replicating to DD2, you will not be able to get any status back from that location, and it will have the status Unknown after the job has been transferred. When using DD2 Client Controls, like TransAutomClient.dll, you will not get correct error messages in the NAV Client when running Jobs or doing a Test connection, because DD3 does not return error numbers like DD2 did. There is a new TransAutomClient.dll that comes with DD3, but it requires some changes to the NAV Codeunits. New code units for LS Retail will soon be issued for upgrade. There is no special Transaction Server, if you are using TS from a POS, you just set it up to communicate with DD3 as a normal Job would do; same port, same host name. Communication is done via either TCP or TCPS protocol. Default TCP is used between Hosts, but within DD Processes TCPS is used. The reason for using TCP by default is that it does not need the user running the DD Service to be set up on both hosts so you can make a connection. TCPS requires all computers to be on the same Domain or if they are on Workgroup, the user and password must be same on all hosts. TCPS does not allow transfer from Domain to Workgroup. Jobs and all requests can be routed via one or more DD Hosts, so you could send a job from Head Office, via Back Office Server, and then Store server and then insert it into POS. This can be done with one job at Head Office, and you will get the status from each Host the job passes through. Chapter 1 - Introduction 2

5 1.2 Why only one DD Service? You may be used to running many DD Services on same host, to speed things up. DD3 handles the job process in a totally new way and there should be no need for many DD Services. The old DD2 only had one thread that handled job processing and forwarding, and while it was processing jobs, it did not forward anything, and likewise when it was forwarding jobs, it did not process anything. DD3 has separate threads for each process. Two threads handle the processing of jobs: one for Insert Data and another for Query data, so it can be doing both at same time. If an Insert job has many destination databases (sub locations), it will create a thread for each database, so that it can insert data into many databases at the same time. Separate threads are used for forwarding jobs and they do not interfere with the Database process. The DD can be processing jobs and forwarding at same time. When sending transaction requests to the DD, it allocates more threads when necessary to handle all database requests at same time. The only time that DD3 has a job waiting for something is if there is a job of the same type already being processed. Then the next job will wait for it to finish. If many different jobs are waiting to be processed, DD3 processes one job from each Queue, until it goes back to first job, so one job should never wait longer than it takes the DD to process one job from each queue. Look at 2.1 for details on how to handle upgrade on Server where you had lot of DD Services running on different ports. 1.3 Supported Operating Environments The following operating systems are supported: - MS Windows XP Professional, 32 bit - MS Windows 2003 Server, 32 bit & 64 bit - MS Windows 2008 Server, 32 bit & 64 bit - MS Windows 7 32 bit & 64 bit Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported for all operating systems 1.4 Supported Databases The following databases are fully supported: MS Dynamics NAV (6.01, 6.02) MS SQL Server 2008 MS SQL Express 2008 MS Dynamics AX 2009.Net Business Connector The following databases are supported but not tested: MS Dynamics NAV (4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 5.01, 6.00) Note that FOB Replication (Import/Export) does not work with these NAV versions. MS SQL Server 2000, 2005 MS SQL Express 2005 Chapter 1 - Introduction 3

6 1.5 Supported Backend Systems The following back-end systems are fully supported: LS Retail NAV 6.1 LS Retail NAV 6.2 LS Retail AX Installing Data Director For detailed Install information, please check out the Manual. DD3 Runs on Framework 4.0 so you need to install it before you install DD3. Make sure to install Full Framework 4.0, not only the Client Profile version. To be able to connect to DD from NAV or other applications you can use the Client Controls that comes with DD2 Setup. Install DD2 Client by running LSRetailDDClient-2.28.x that comes with this release. DD3 can also run with DD2 Service installed, if you want to have both DD2 & DD3 on same computer, you need make sure that either one of them is running or change the Incoming Port on DD2 to another than the Default port Install DD3 by running LSRetailDD.3.01.x-Install. What will be installed is Data Director Service that shows up in Windows Services and 3 applications, Config Tool and 2 Monitoring tools that you find in Start Menu. If you plan on using the Scheduler for the Store Controller, and you have already installed Store Controller application, place a check mark in the Register SC Plugin check box to register the Scheduler Plugin into SC. No configuration is needed to start up DD3 with default settings. After installation, the DD will start up with default configuration. If DD should connect to database with trusted connection, you need to add Login to the DD Service to log on as a User that has access to read and write the data to the database. Open Config Tool and upload the DD license, demo DD license is installed by default upon installation. If DD is connected to NAV, upload the NAV Licenses file also under App Config tab. 2.1 Update DD2 to DD3 When updating current systems running DD2, the same method is best as recommended before. Start by updating Head Office with DD3, while stores and POS can still run on DD2. If Head Office had many DD or TS Services running on different ports, you can assign all of those Services and ports in the Configuration Tool. Type all services name into Aliases under the Basic Config tab and port numbers into the Data Ports field under App Config. No changes are required at the Stores and POS still running DD2. You need to change the Distribution Location data at HO for each Host still running DD2 so DD3 can send job to the old DD2. The port and communication mode needs to be added to the Distribution server name like this: HOST:16750:DDOLD When Store or POS has been updated to DD3, you can take these extra port and mode values out of the host name. No change in Location Setup is needed at the POS or Store running DD2 to be able to communicate to HO running DD3. Chapter 2 - Installing Data Director 4

7 3 What if I have problems? If you run into any problems or find a bug or just have some idea of what we could do better, please contact us at LS Retail via the Support feature on the LS Retail Partner Portal ( If you are sending in bug report, it is very helpful to us if you attach the debug and other files that could help us finding out what could be wrong. You can find these files under the Data folder path (see Configuration tool for location). Under that location you will see these folders: Log: Includes all Debug files from DD Processes Work: Includes Job and Data files that are waiting to be processed Archive: Includes Job files of processed jobs Temp: If you dump the Queue data from the Config Tool this is where you would find that file. The files that would be helpful to send with the support request are the Log files found in the Log folder. If the problem is a Job that always get a processing error from the Database, then include the job files from the work folder. You would find 3-4 files for each job, and they are marked HOST-PAKID-XXXX.xml. These files include the HEAD File which has the information that used be stored in the Incoming/Outgoing table, the IDAT file has the Incoming Data, and RDAT has the Outgoing data. You also see a ZIP file there and that is the file that is going to be sent over to next host, or a zip file coming in from a remote host. If the Router is not doing anything and jobs are just hanging and waiting, then click on the Dump Memory button and send the Queue data file found under the Temp folder (or where it displays that is saved the dump data) The files you see in the Archive folder are Jobs that have been processed, and you could save those files if you want some history of processed jobs. NOTE: do not play with the files in the work folder, or lock them by other applications. This will affect the working behavior of DD. If you need to cancel a job or check for job statuses, use the Job Monitor Application. To reset the Queue status and clear out all jobs, if you want DD to start with fresh startup, shutdown the DD system, and delete all files in the work folder, and then start it up again. Because DD3 does not report error numbers in same way as DD2 did, you will not always get an error number that tells you much. Error still comes if DD is not responding, but error is just a general error from the Database. To find out what is going on, open up the Configuration Tool, go to the Debug tab, and open up Debug on Database application, and connect to it. You will see a more detailed error log there on why DD cannot process the Request. See the Manual for information on using DD3 TransAutomClient that can display the real error message back to the NAV Client. Chapter 3 - What if I have problems? 5

8 4 Improvements and Bug Fixes This version includes the following improvements and bug fixes. 4.1 Fixed CFront Crash on close connection In cases where close connection, database or company was called twice it could cause the CFront Library to crash which also let DD stop processing Database jobs. DD should now be able to handle this bug in cfront without stopping. 4.2 Fixed Field Class Data in Read Field Design Field Class did not show up correctly when Field Design fetched with DD. 4.3 Status Check can be done on Jobs with status None Checking for Job status did only work on Jobs with status other than Done or None, but now it s possible to check status of a Job, no matter what the status is. 4.4 Automatic Status check Automatic status check now also checks for locked forwarding queues, so if a job failed to be forwarded to destination host and the forwarding queue is stuck in waiting, then DD will automatically check for transfer status and reset waiting status if destination is back online. 4.5 Fixed null Date and Blob transfer via TransAutomClient Fixed null Date, to show up correctly in the client code, SetBlob & GetBlob works now, and other minor fixes have been done. 4.6 General fixes Some other fixes have been made that have been discovered since last release FAQ and Known Issues 5.1 NAV in languages other than English If you are running Navision in different language than English, you need to copy the fin.etx and fin.stx files from the language folder where the Nav Client is installed to the correct CFront folder for Data Director. This is necessary so that CFront can find values like Boolean, where it is Yes in English but Sí in Spanish. The CFront files that come with Data Director Install are from the English W1 install of Nav. 5.2 My test connection doesn t work, I get error Open up DD Config and go to the Debugging tab. Press the Open button next to the Debug Level Value for Database and the click on Connect. You should see detailed error text describing what is wrong there. If you don t get any data in the debug window, make sure the Distribution Server name in Location setup only includes the Host Name where DD is running, not HOST:16860:TCP. You only need to apply the port number when connecting to older DD2 or if DD3 is not running on default or port. Chapter 4 - Improvements and Bug Fixes 6

9 6 Release Track Context ID Support for Store Controller Primary Key info transmitted with Field Design Event Viewer Error Logging Memory leak fixed for CFront queries New Queue viewer in Configuration tool New Data File Format File Transfer via Monitor Port added New Compression modes added Multi Job Processing Job on Hold Rerouting Forwarding Queue Modification of Database Connection string Support for OleDB Connection Socket Timeout Job Archive to Database Backup Destination Host setup Use Guid for pack number Remote DD Update Text DB Support Universal Connection String Parsing Scheduler service for Store Control CFront 602 added for Nav 2009 R2 More than one Client can connect to Debug and Monitor stream Multiple incoming socket ports for support with older DD setup (see 2.1) Archive Expire, keep archive files for x days then they will be deleted Add Start & Stop DD Window Service in Config Tool Same License system used as in DD2, same license files can be used with DD3 Installer starts DD Service after Install is done Check Job status at destination added to Job Monitor Direct access to SQL Database for NAV SQL Servers Multi Host update in Configuration tool Support for FOB Import jobs NAV License update Offline / Manual Transfer Support Chapter 6 - Release Track 7