For the Developer
The xRM SDK has been built using the tools that today's developers work with every day. Their skills are transferable and the SDK will perform as they expect and as they require. Using best practices for ASP.NET development, the SDK will make it easy for developers to build an agile, integrated CRM web solution.
CrmMetal.exe Tool
- Generates statically typed entity classes
- Generates many-to-many relationship classes
- Generates Enum types for Picklist values
- Generates class names and property names based on CRM schema display names (more readable than the raw schema names)
- Generates an ADO.Net Data Services (Astoria) compatible data context class for managing entities
- Generates RIA Services entity metadata classes
- Generates a RIA Services domain service class
Entity Classes
- Supports ADO.Net Data Services (Astoria) annotation attributes
- Strongly typed entity attribute accessors
- Maps/abstracts CRM data-types into standard CLR data-types
- Many-to-one relationship accessors
- Lazily loads the related entity
- Also includes accessors for the foreign key IDs
- Supports statically typed “polymorphic” foreign key relationships for Lookup, Customer, and Owner attributes
- Many-to-many relationship accessors
- Lazily loads the related entity set
- Supports attribute change tracking
- Only the modified attributes are sent back to the CRM on update
- Includes string label accessors for Picklist attributes
- Statically captures metadata for performance
Data Context Classes
- Implements the ADO.Net Data Services interfaces IUpdatable and IExpandProvider (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.services.iupdatable.aspx)
- Provides read, create, update, and delete operations for managing entities
- Provides set-link, add-link, and remove-link operations for managing relationships (1-to-N, N-to-1, and N-to-N)
- Supports the DataServiceHostFactory for exposing web services and REST services
- Provides a LINQ query provider for statically or dynamically typed queries
- Dynamic queries do not require code-generation
- Handles caching in the background
LINQ Query Provider
- Supports the Join, Where, OrderBy, and Select functions
- Also supports the Skip, Take, Distinct, Single, and First functions
- Seamlessly handles the other IEnumerable extensions
- Select to anonymous types, constructors, and initializers
- Where conditions recognizes Contains, StartsWith, EndsWith, and Equals String functions
- Specify attributes statically or dynamically
Other
- Provides CRM workflow for cache invalidation
- .Net Service Bus based cache invalidation
Support for All CRM Deployment Models
The ADXSTUDIO xRM SDK supports all Dynamics® CRM deployment models: On-Premise, Partner-Hosted, and CRM Online. By design our SDK allows developers and implementers to build the custom solutions their clients need using the Dynamics® CRM installation that they already employ.
Clean Separation of CRM Code and Website Code
There is clean and full separation of the CRM Code and the Web Code. The Web Code can be handed-off to a website designer with no impact on the CRM Code underneath. This reduces the time to project-completion as the website designer can be working alongside the developer.