Thursday 10 November 2016

SOLUTION

Solutions exist so that a set of customization can be purchased, shared or otherwise transported from one organization to another. It is a container for a set of components. 

Default Solution
When you customize the CRM system directly, you work with a special solution called the Default Solution. The Default Solution contains all the components in your system. Creating solutions is optional. You can customize your CRM system directly without ever creating a solution. You can only export your Default Solution as an unmanaged solution.

If a new solution is created, it references the components in the default solution and not copies of the components. So a custom or new solution is just a wrapper of the components of the default solution.


Managed Solution
A managed solution are used for distribution of solution. All the components of the solution are removed by uninstalling the solution. To create a managed solution, you choose the managed solution option when you export the solution. If you create a managed solution, you can’t import it back into the same organization you used to create it. You can only import it into a different organization

Unmanaged Solution
These are solutions used during development because they are customizable. When imported into an organization it over-writes the changes or custom development/customization of the latest solution in the organization. 

Versioning Solution
There are four numbers used separated by dots. e.g 1.2.3.4 
Sequentially, they are named (MMBR)

  • Major version number
  • Minor version number
  • Build number
  • Revision number
The first two numbers are updated when a new feature is added to the solution and the last two when a bug is fixed in the solution.

Customizing Solution after Exporting
It is possible to customize Managed solution after exporting the solution because by default Microsoft Dynamics CRM set "Can be Customized" property in the Managed Properties of every solution to true. If you want to restrict access to custom adjustments of the solution you have to set this property to false

Tuesday 1 November 2016

Import Data from Excel into SQL Sever

So again today I faced another challenge as expected. The task for today was to import and merge data from four tables in a database located in a certain/specified server into a single table of an existing database on another server.
Connecting to the server wasn't the hard part, copying the data into an excel sheet and saving it as a CSV format wasn't either. It was importing of the data brought a headache. 
This is why I love Google. I get answers

These are the steps I followed to get the job done
Note: Create a Destination Table
  1. Convert the Excel format to  xlsx  because it's the only format accepted. 
  2. Connect to SQL Management studio, right-click the database , select "task" then "Import Data" 
  3. Select "Microsoft Excel" as the Source  and Choose the "File Location" then Follow the Wizard steps as shown on the screen.
  4. A table is created in the Database and it uses the Excel Title as the Table Name.
  5. Right-click on the Table, "Script Table as" ==>  "CREATE To" to get the CREATE Format of the table for your destination Table where all the data will eventually be. Copy and Run the script in your existing table to generate column names
  6. Right-Click on the Database, select "task" ==> "Generate Scripts" and Follow the Wizard to the Scripting Options page
  7. Select "Advanced" on the "Types of data to script" select any option that suits what you want to do
  8. Click on the file menu to add a file (the Generate script you just saved). once loaded edit the table name to point to the new Table (Destination table) and run the Query.
  9. Run Select (*) FROM Destination Table to confirm it has records.
  10. Repeat steps for all other Tables. 

An excel sheet can't take more than 1,048,576 rows.