Does APM support Microsoft Dynamics AX?

Elastic Observability APM
1

We are using Microsoft Dynamics AX, Windows ERP application. We would like to monitor our AX Application.

Does APM support Microsoft Dynamics AX?

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Welcome to discuss @saadullahz,

We have not tested the agent with Microsoft Dynamics AX, and I'm definitely not an expert on it.

But in case it runs on .NET Framework 4.6.1 or newer then the .NET agent should work there. This is a good start to learn how you can enable it for IIS: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/dotnet/current/setup.html#setup-asp-net

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Hello @GregKalapos,

Microsoft Dynamics AX runs on .Net framework 4.5.

Can you tell me how to setup this agent.

Microsoft Dynamics AX has its own IDE called Morphx. All the coding are done on this IDE. We do not use Visual studio for our coding purpose.

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Unfortunately I'm not familiar with that.

Can you include .NET assemblies (.dll files or NuGet packages) in that environment? Does it even run on .NET? Sorry for my ignorance, but Dynamics AX is really not my area.

If you can't include the NuGet package or at least the dll file, then it won't be easy to use the .NET agent.

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Hello @GregKalapos

Yes We can add .dll files on our IDE. Microsoft Dynamics Ax supports .Net codes.

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Attached Dynamics AX Application architecture for your reference.

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image950×756 228 KB

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Actually for the very 1. step you don't even need to write code - just add our agent to it (we can discuss after this step if you miss something and if you need any further action to maybe write code)

So, the first thing to discuss is: which component do you want to monitor? If that is one of the components running in IIS then you need to add our IIS module, which is in this package: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Elastic.Apm.AspNetFullFramework

Can you also add NuGet packages? That'd be the easiest.

After that, the next question is: do you have a web.config file and can you edit it, according to our docs? https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/dotnet/current/setup.html#setup-asp-net

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We want to monitor Microsoft Dynamics AX Windows Client. Our Dynamics AX not running on IIS.

Also We can't use NuGet packages on our system. We can use DLL files.

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I see, ok, so - in this case the first thing to know is that for a client side application we won't show you any transaction out of the box - you need to manually trace your code.

For this you can use our Public Agent API: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/dotnet/current/public-api.html

Does the Dynamics AX Windows client run on top of .NET? If it is and it's at least version 4.6.1, then it can work.

If you can only add .dll files then probably the easiest way is to just manually download the NuGet package of the agent and unzip it, and copy the .dll file to your app (not very nice, but for now probably the fastest way to make progress).

The package I linked previously is the IIS module, which references the core agent package. Given that you don't need IIS tracing, you can use the core agent package directly, which is here. - just download manually and unzip it.

Once you add that, the next question will be: can you write C# code to trace the application?

...again sorry for the lot of questions, but I need to have info about your environment so I can provide some help.

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Thank you for your reply.

Microsoft Dynamics requires .Net framework to run this application. Currently we installed .Net framework 4.5 version.

By using DLL file we can consume all dll functions directly on our development code like .Net code.

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@saadullahz .NET Framework 4.5 is unfortunately not supported by our agent package. We only support 4.6.1 and newer.

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