From a recent email: 

What, in your opinion, is the best recovery model for a GP database?  Full? Bulk_Logged? Simple?  They all seem to have their pros & cons but I can't find anyplace where someone says this model is better than the other two because of X, Y or Z reasons.
 

A:

Simple
If you use Simple, transaction logging is disabled. Simply backing up the database will truncate the transaction logs. (If the…

Great article by Microsoft Support, check it out here.

Regards,
--
Mohammad R.…

I have seen this question posted in multiple shapes and forms, but could well be rounded up as follows: "I installed Microsoft SQL Server with an Arabic_BIN collation. In addition, I installed Microsoft Dynamics GP on my server and a few clients. All my clients can access the system with no problems. However, I have this one user who 'accidentally' switched his/her Windows locale to English (United States) and is getting all sorts of errors when accessing the system or trying to enter transactions or master records."

This is not at all uncommon, but to put an end to the myths sorrounding this issue it is necessary to understand how collations work in both Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL Server.

Windows Collations

Windows collations are collations defined for SQL Server to support Windows locales. By specifying a Windows collation for SQL Server, the instance of SQL Server uses the same code pages and sorting and comparison rules as the Microsoft Dynamics GP client that is running on a computer for which you have specified the associated Windows locale. For example, the French Windows collation for SQL Server matches the collation attributes of the French locale for Windows.

There are more Windows locales than there are SQL Server Windows collations. The names of Windows locales are based on a…

Paul Randall is a guy a I listen to in the SQL Server space. Eight and half years on the SQL Server team at Microsoft will do that.

Today Paul…

This one comes straight off the Microsoft Dynamics GP newsgroup (even the title given to this article).

Business Situation

During the course of a test upgrade the user came across a situation where records in a Smartlist table were not upgrading at all. In his attempts to have the upgrade bypass the problem, the user deleted the records from the SmartList table in question and the upgrade was able to succeed.

Nonetheless, the user attempted to run a few of the built-in SQL Maintenance routines found under Microsoft Dynamics GP > Maintenance > SQL and came back empty handed. This series of routines did not correct the damaged records and did nothing in aiding the upgrade, which brings us to the question on the subject:

What does SQL Maintenance really do?

This question can be answered by looking at what SQL Maintenance does not do. SQL Maintenance does not take any actions on table records, except of course, when you drop a table :-).















The routines found under SQL Maintenance are designed to perform preventative database maintenance and each option can be explained as follows:

Recompile

As a database is changed by such actions as adding indexes or changing data in indexed columns, the original query plans used to access its tables should be optimized again by recompiling them. This optimization happens automatically the first time a stored procedure is run after Microsoft SQL Server is restarted. It also occurs if an underlying table used by the stored procedure changes. But if a new index is…

I know there are some SQL junkies out there always looking for the next SQL script for…

Unless you have been working with Dynamics GP from the days of Ctree and Btrieve, it is quite difficult to comprehend why Dynamics GP seems to behave (as in act up) in certain ways on SQL Server -- how would I say this... not quite like your other Windows applications that run on SQL Server.

To understand some of these behavioral issues, David Musgrave brings a two-part series on Understanding how Microsoft…

An Important note if you are planning to setup GP 10 with the recently released SQL Server 2008 R2 - Service Pack 5 for Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0 required. Service Pack 5 is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2010.

You would get the error - “your current SQL Server is not a supported version” if you try to install GP 10 with SQL 2008 R2. 

 

GP 2010 is supported out of the box - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 - Enterprise…

If you have worked with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) in either Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2008, you may have inadvertly overlooked one of its key features: Standard Reports.

Standard Reports are Reporting Services (SSRS) reports that can provide all sort of statuses and and information about the database engine and its management components and well as the databases themselves in real time -- the reports are refreshable! When executed, the reports are embedded in tabs within a new SSMS tab. As a consultant, I find these reports particularly useful when attempting to establish the health of a Microsoft Dynamics GP SQL Server installation. I can immediately relay critical SQL Server performance information to my clients and suggest preventative or corrective actions to mitigate the issues, saving them money in the process.

So lets take a look at the available reports by node...

Node	Report
Server	Server Dashboard
Server	Configuration Changes History
Server	Schema Changes History
Server	Scheduler Health
Server	Memory Consumption
Server	Activity – All Blocking Transactions
Server	Activity – All Cursors
Server	Activity – Top Cursors
Server	Activity – All Sessions
Server	Activity – Top Sessions
Server	Activity – Dormant Sessions
Server…

I have been involved for over the past 6 months with an extensive project requiring complex integrations between Microsoft Dynamics GP 10.0, Microsoft CRM 4.0 and other custom operational systems. In the process of designing and implementing these integrations the client requested a very easy to use interface that could be maintained without having to hire an army of developers or even specialized resources.

The mission: insert/update customer addresses and inventory items from Microsoft Dynamics GP into Microsoft CRM's Product and Customer Address entities. The client also requested the integration be done using the Microsoft CRM web services in order to ensure upgrade support.

Background

Beginning with SQL Server…