Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains Technology notes: .Net, C#, eConnect

Great Plains came the long way, being designed in earlier 1990th on Great Plains Software Dexterity platform, which in turn was architectured in C programming language as a IDE and the shell.  Dexterity played core role in Great Plains architecture, until GP was acquired by Microsoft.  As you can imagine, Microsoft has its own long term software development architecture – Microsoft .Net.  It is interesting technology historical phase, when Microsoft was in the decision to either adopt Java or invent its own programming language, which should be easily understood to Java developers community, and at the same time, which would serve .Net object model – C# was the way to go

• Project Green transformation into Microsoft Dynamics.  In September 2004 Microsoft announced ERP lines rename: Microsoft Great Plains was renamed into Microsoft Dynamics GP, and respectively Axapta into AX, Navision into NAV, Solomon into SL, Microsoft CRM into Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  Project Green was kind of the promise to the future redesign into Microsoft Financials, Microsoft Logistics, Microsoft Manufacturing, etc. modules set, where they modules would be built upon one of the MBS ERP products – Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, Axapta, but they should of loose originating product dependence and become compatible with other Microsoft ERP modules. 
• Microsoft Dynamics.  In our unofficial opinion, Microsoft Dynamics changed the paradigm to the one, proclaiming the way to grow.  If you are midsize business – Microsoft Dynamics GP is a good choice, and if you are growing to upper midsize and large business – AX is the way to switch over.  Both Axapta and Great Plains have their proprietary architectures: Morph X++ and Microsoft Dexterity respectively, so the way to enable these ERP for .Net developers community, Microsoft designed such tools as eConnect for Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics GP
• Microsoft Dexterity.  It is still playing very important role – DYNAMICS.DIC, Dynammics.set, Dex.ini, DEX_ROW_ID  - these are attributes of Microsoft Dynamics GP Dexterity.  Dexterity allows you to manipulate and customize virtually all GP forms, reports tables and business logics.  Dex is proprietary language with sanscript scripting code, and learning curve for new developer is very long – so we don’t recommend in-house dex development, rather you should contact Microsoft Great Plains Dexterity development partner.