Skip to main content

Subtle but important difference between _ds.executeQuery() and ds.Research()

This is actually an old entry.

Been tumbling with a problem for the last few days.

A form in our Dynamics AX module for Preventive Maintenance Control was not behaving.

The form has "explicit" filter fields that the user can see without having to activate the form filter (CTRL+F3), for setting up filters most commonly used in an easy way.

And this is working ok. However at this customer site, the form has been adjusted so that the user can have the form refreshed automatically periodically, and when the users at the customer site were making use of the "explicit" filter combined with the AX's normal filtering (CTRL+F3), the form simply threw away the normal form filtering.

I discovered a subtle but very important difference between writing

_ds.executeQuery();

(which was the way our code was doing it)

and

_ds.Research();

The difference is that _ds.Research() will retain the filter ranges in the forms query as they are right now.
_ds.executeQuery() will NOT.

It is mentioned in the Developer's Guide, but I guess the responsible programmer hadn't noticed that one.

Developer's guide states:

"research vs. executeQuery

If you want to refresh the form with records that were inserted in a method or job that was called, then you should use research.

If you want to change the query to show other records, perhaps based on a modified filter, then you should use executeQuery."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Suppressing the infolog

Supressing the infolog is often useful in D365FO when augmenting code. When augmenting code using COC (Chain Of Command), you can have new code run either before or after the code you are augmenting. This means that any infolog-messages that the standard application code does, will be shown to the user, even if your augmentation supports a scenario where there must be no infolog-messages. How do you avoid the standard application infolog-messages ? To the rescue comes temporary supression of the infolog. The suppression consists of: 1) Saving the current infologLevel 2) Setting the infologLevel to SysInfologLevel::None 3) Run your code 4) Restoring the saved infologLevel to the infolog For example a table could have a validatewrite-method that validates that you are only allowed to use 3 out of 6 options in an enum-field, and you need to allow for a fourth one. Table a - validateWrite method: boolean validateWrite() {     Switch (this.enumField)     {         boolean ret;         case

Indicating mandatory field in a dialog (RunBase) class.

A classical problem is indicating that a field is mandatory in a dialog, when the field is not bound to a datasource/field in a datasource. Normally fellow developers will tell you that, that is not possible. I found a way to do this. In your Runbase-based class you can implement the putToDialog-method e.g like this: protected void putToDialog() { super(); fieldMask.fieldControl().mandatory(true); } where fieldMask is a DialogField object in your dialog. This will make the field act like it was a mandatory field from a datasource in a form, showing a red-wavy line under the field, and requiring the field to have a value. Attention: Your class has to run on the client.If you set your class to run on the server, you get a run-time error, when the fieldMask.FieldControl()-call is made.

Dynamics ax 2012 traversing selected records in a form data source

A classical developer challenge in Dynamics AX is to enable a form button when multiple records have been selected in the form by the user. This usually involves writing some form of loop (for or while or do-while) that starts out with calling _ds.getFirst() and continuing the loop as long as _ds.getNext() returns a tablebuffer. Well things got a little bit easier in AX 2012. In AX 2012 you can use the MultiSelectionHelper class. One example is the following that I encountered in AX 2012: Can you make the customer collection letter print out run for each selected collection record in the Print/Post collection letters form (Accounts receiveable / Periodic / Collections / Print/Post Collection letters). If we ignore the possibility for setting up print destination for running each report we can do this in two steps: 1) Change the "Multiselect" property of the "MenuButton" and the "Menuitembutton" in the MenuButton in the form from "Auto&quo