Today we will continue to discuss Microsoft Dynamics AX. We briefly reviewed the user interface features to get to know Dynamics AX. Then we looked at the variety of tools for viewing and analyzing business data. Data is usually presented in Reports. Reports can be generated in a variety of ways. The standard-reports are pre-constructed views of business data and they number in hundreds. Reports are available from their data sources such as general ledger. Auto reports enables us to view the data from a form and these data can be saved to the Application Object Tree AOT. Ad hoc reports provide greater flexibility for generating reports although they still use a report template. This is helpful when parameters have to be passed in to generate the reports. OLAP reports span more duration of data for analysis where trends in business data becomes more important.
Tasks might take longer to execute. Sometimes its best to let it run elsewhere and at some other time where they can be prioritized, queued and executed. For this purpose we can submit batch jobs which are maintained in a batch job list.
Documents may be attached to data. This is helpful in cases where we need to add notes and attachments to the data. Multiple notes may be attached to the same data.
The enterprise portal enables web based access to the dynamics instance on a server installed in the enterprise network. Access is role based such as employees, Sales representatives, consultants, vendors, customers etc.
#codingexercise from yesterday: https://ideone.com/cirMb7
and another:
Fill out a given matrix of size N x M with B mines so that a player playing minesweeper can find them using clues that are given as numbers in each cell that indicate the number of mines in the adjacent eight cells: 
https://ideone.com/kPGtZ5

Today we will continue to discuss Microsoft Dynamics AX. We briefly reviewed the user interface features to get to know Dynamics AX. Then we looked at the variety of tools for viewing and analyzing business data. Data is usually presented in Reports. Reports can be generated in a variety of ways. The standard-reports are pre-constructed views of business data and they number in hundreds. Reports are available from their data sources such as general ledger. Auto reports enables us to view the data from a form and these data can be saved to the Application Object Tree AOT. Ad hoc reports provide greater flexibility for generating reports although they still use a report template. This is helpful when parameters have to be passed in to generate the reports. OLAP reports span more duration of data for analysis where trends in business data becomes more important.
Tasks might take longer to execute. Sometimes its best to let it run elsewhere and at some other time where they can be prioritized, queued and executed. For this purpose we can submit batch jobs which are maintained in a batch job list.
Documents may be attached to data. This is helpful in cases where we need to add notes and attachments to the data. Multiple notes may be attached to the same data.
The enterprise portal enables web based access to the dynamics instance on a server installed in the enterprise network. Access is role based such as employees, Sales representatives, consultants, vendors, customers etc.

#codingexercise
In an M×N board with Q horses and their coordinates, moves are only possible by swapping horses.
These horses move as usual to any of their eight location from their current position . How many distinct chess board arrangements are possible.
We discussed one solution as to enumerate all the squares that can be occupied by individual pieces say n and permute k horses in that space which leads us to P(n,k). Another way to do this would be to identify each square that can be occupied and the pieces that can occupy it together with all the pairs that can swap. If we confirm that the available squares can be occupied by all pieces in one or more moves, then we can lean towards permutations as an easy way to determine the answer.

This can also be solved with a graph and finding paths where the intermediary nodes are the positions occupied by the other horses.

Today we will continue to discuss Microsoft Dynamics AX. We briefly reviewed the user interface features to get to know Dynamics AX.
We saw that the navigation pane provides access to the modules and functionality such as General Ledger, Bank etc. Modules contain folders such as Journals, Inquiries, Reports, Periodic and Setup. Folders contain menu items which execute a function within the program such as opening a form, report or dialogbox.
The toolbar helps us with frequently performed tasks. Tasks include such things as converting units, creating language texts, displaying amounts in a different currency, navigating to other companies, clipboard actions, and changing dates.  Favorites are a way to create shortcut to items such as forms, reports, and queries that we use frequently. Favorites can be organized into folders and can be grouped.
Data appears in the form of records. Records may be created using templates. Templates give pre-filled data that can be used to create records. They may be available only to the user, or to all the users within a selected company, or they could be a system template such as to manage users. Records can be found, filtered and sorted.
We can also add notes, documents, spreadsheets and other files to records. Multiple notes can be created for the same record.
Dynamics AX provides a variety of tools for viewing and analyzing business data. We will go over these now. Reports can be generated in a variety of ways. The standard-reports are pre-constructed views of business data and they number in hundreds. Reports are available from their data sources such as general ledger. Auto reports enables us to view the data from a form and these data can be saved to the Application Object Tree AOT.

#codingexercise
In an M×N board with Q horses and their coordinates, moves are only possible by swapping horses.
These horses move as usual to any of their eight location from their current position . How many distinct chess board arrangements are possible.
Another solution possible is to enumerate all the squares that can be occupied by individual pieces say n and permute k horses in that space which leads us to P(n,k)

#sqlexercise
OVER clause is available from SQL server 2008 onwards.
eg:
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY PostalCode ORDER BY SalesYTD DESC) AS "Row Number",   <other columns>
FROM <originating view>
ORDER BY PostalCode.

#codingexercise
In an M×N board with Q horses and their coordinates, moves are only possible by swapping horses.
These horses move as usual to any of their eight location from their current position . How many distinct chess board arrangements are possible .
Solution. This is proportional to the product of the number of swaps possible.
Given a position of a horse, we can find the occupancy in the other eight and enumerate the swaps possible as pairs. pairs are distinct only by membership not order

Today we will continue to discuss Microsoft Dynamics AX. We briefly review the user interface features to get to know Dynamics AX.
The navigation pane provides access to the modules and functionality such as General Ledger, Bank etc. Modules contain folders such as Journals, Inquiries, Reports, Periodic and Setup. Folders contain menu items which execute a function within the program such as opening a form, report or dialogbox. The workspace can be customized to include the buttons that appear in the navigation pane. The toolbar helps us with frequently performed tasks. Tasks include such things as converting units, creating language texts, displaying amounts in a different currency, navigating to other companies, clipboard actions, and changing dates.  Favorites are a way to create shortcut to items such as forms, reports, and queries that we use frequently. Favorites can be organized into folders and can be grouped.
Data appears in the form of records. Records may be created using templates. Templates give pre-filled data that can be used to create records. They may be available only to the user, or to all the users within a selected company, or they could be a system template such as to manage users. Records can be found, filtered and sorted.
Alerts provide a way to track critical events. Alerts are nothing but rules which are available as templates. The different event types supported include due date-type events, update-type events, and create-type and delete-type events Alerts can be displayed as pop-up messages or email messages. Alerts can also be listed from the interface so they can be viewed all at once.
We can also add notes, documents, spreadsheets and other files to records.  Documents are archived in a specific directory. Document types are used to enumerate the documents that can be attached to records. A note or document reference can also be copied from record to record. Multiple notes can be created for the same record.
Dynamics AX provides a variety of tools for viewing and analyzing business data. We will go over these tomorrow.

We return to our discussion of Microsoft Dynamics AX for finance and operations.
AX has a notion of Product Configurator which centralizes the creation of products and determines how the product variants are used.
Allows creation of various category hierarchies like procurement, sales and retail. It allows us to specify vendor evaluation criteria based on procurement categories and to specify approved and preferred vendors for procurement categories.
Purchase and sale agreements can be authored. Microsoft Dynamics AX supports both value-based and quantity-based sales agreements.
The terms and conditions of a sales agreement such as the prices and discounts can be applied when creating an order using the order details forms.
Sales agreements can have a validity period defined and can be put on hold. They are also searchable.
Categories and agreements are browsable. We can control the navigation pane by hiding and re-organizing a module list  and adding a query to a favorite. We can also document our processes if we would like to record tasks.
Sales and purchase orders can have packing slip corrections made.
Intercompany orders, relations and policies are set up in a form that can be specified once and shared.
The Microsoft Dynamics AX supports standard workflows available out of box for users to setup. Workflows are processes that meet business requirements. The AX workflows can be specified using controls like conditional decisions, manual and parallel activities and even sub-workflows. There is ability to escalate workflows.
Purchase requisitions can be entered with approved vendors. There is history of purchase requisitions approvals and it can be viewed. Permissions can be specified to enable a requester to request on behalf of somebody else.
Purchasing policy groups gives us the ability to create multiple purchasing policies.

#codingexercise
Given a triangular structure of members, find the minimum sum path from top to bottom:
int GetMinSum(List<List<int>> A)
{
int n = A.Count();
var sums = new int[A[n].Count()];
for (int i = 0; i < sums.Count; i++)
   sums[i] = A[n][i];
int level = n-1;
GetMinSumRecursive(A, level, ref sums);
return sums[0];
}

void GetMinSumRecursive(List<List<int>> A, int level, ref int[] sums)
{
if (level < 1) {return;}
for (int j = 0; j < A[level-1].Count(); j++)
{
    sums[j] = A[level-1,j] + sums.toList().GetRange(A[level].Count()).min();
    //  + min(sums[j], sums[j+1]);  instead of the min above
   // if the path has to be left or right only
}
GetMinSumRecursive(A, level-1, ref sums);
}

Driver-Rider Real-Time Monitoring
Introduction:
Problem Statement: When parents offer to engage in carpool for their kids in daily commutes, the location information of the assets is generally unknown for the duration of the ride. Map based mobile device applications may enable driver –rider location sharing but their real time notifications to stationary observers are extremely expensive to both the device  on the moving vehicle as well as the handheld on the stationary observer. This document attempts to provide an efficient solution to elastic scaling of observers and rides that is not only performing but also convenient without requiring anything more than a browser interface for the publisher and the subscriber.


Differentiation:
Google Maps and Uber/Lyft applications enable location sharing but they heat up the mobile device when turned on.  Moreover, neither application allows an observer to include more than just the ride from a particular participant.
Design:
Without the use of native mobile applications, a browser based application that can query local mobile operating system’s location sharing primitives is sufficient to publish data to cloud based service.
A message queue broker from the cloud handles the exchange of messages required for sharing the location information between publisher and elastic  group of observers. A global cloud database keeps track of all the information regarding rides and observers.
Architecture:
All cloud based technologies are sufficient for this purpose. And web interface for browser display can be based on server side page displays.
Performance:
The use of cloud based technologies such as queue service, cloud database and such others are sufficient to improve performance. Standalone superfast erlang based applications are not required.
Security:
Access control is based on row level security in the database enabling granular control of all necessary assets.
Testing:
All server side code regardless of the tier involved can be unit-tested and integration tested with selenium web-browser based tests.
Conclusion:
Publisher-subscriber application of location sharing mobile units can be applied to a variety of domains.

#codingexercise

Given a triangular structure of members, find the minimum sum path from top to bottom:

Solution: Since each level has to be represented once, pick the minimum of each level to add to the desired sum

otherwise the exhaustive case is :

int GetMinSumPathTopToBottom(int[,] A, int rows, int cols, int i, int j)
{ 
    if (i == rows) {return 0;}
    Debug.Assert( 0 <= i && i < rows && 0 <= j && j < cols);
    var locals = new List<int>();
    sums += A[i,j];
    for (int k = 0; k < cols; k++)
    {     
        locals.Add(GetMinSumPathTopToBottom(A, rows, cols, i+1, k));
    }
    sums += locals.min();
    return sums;
}

Today onwards we will start discussing Microsoft Dynamics AX from the Dynamics suite of products. Uptil now, we have talked about reporting solutions and dashboards from a variety of technology stacks such as Grafana, Splunk  and SSRS but it would be interesting to see such techniques applied to customer relationship management. Dynamics 365 is more than a personal book for your customer, it provides a professional with the best tools for managing their data, updating records, and status both online and offline.
Dynamics AX enables us to capture our expense transactions and receipt information. It also helps us create and submit timesheets. Initially we used to have expensive ERP software until Dynamics AX came along the way.
Some of the major benefits from AX include the following:
1) While most enterprise resource planning software were traditional enterprise products, Dynamics AX is built with cloud services. This facilitates ubiquity and reachability from any device anywhere.  Not only does this simplify production deployments for the product offerings, it also enables continuous availability and updates. As with all the benefits of cloud computing such as elastic scaling, load balancing, regional availabilities etc the services powering Dynamics AX also means improved handling of data. Improvements in data handling was previously mentioned here: https://goo.gl/n4G2TU
2) Another advantage to Dynamics AX is the integrations it can perform via connectors, plugins and data sources. More data generally means better reports and more meaningful insight and not just from a statistics perspective but from several analysis techniques such as with PowerBI
3) Faster development  and deployment - The entire software development life-cycle with off the shelf products such as AX now becomes far easier and continuous without any compromise in control, governance and compliance. This is a big win for common criteria certification
4) Improved development environment - The development environment could not be any better than the Visual Studio and .NET framework integration along with the rich set of tools that come with that IDE. The entire Application Object Tree (AOT) is available to browse in the Visual Studio. The development is with X++ language which is specific to accounting and business  management systems. It is considered at par with managed languages such as C#.
5) Scoping - Earlier users were granted access via role centers. Dynamics AX uses the equivalent of namespaces called workspaces which enable the users to focus on the most important aspects of their tasks.
6) Web Interface - cloud service power rich user interface via the web browser that makes it near ubiquitous to access and perform daily activities.