This new “series” is intended to briefly mention various topics that I find interesting and/or useful, but they’re too short for a separate posts. I don’t currently want to spend more time with them or I just simply want to give you a link and I wouldn’t add any additional value.

Compare 〈Dynamics AX〉

The Compare feature for application objects in Dynamics AX isn’t particularly smart. It’s useful simple cases, but it fails to understand more complicated changes – it shows them as two completely different things, so you have to identify exact changes by yourself.

If I need a more reasonable comparison, I use external tools such as TortoiseMerge.

It might be useful to integrate it into AX. All what would be needed is to export the texts that we want to compare to temporary files and call TortoiseMerge with right parameters.

I also often use comparison directly in source control systems (TFS, SourceSafe).

BindableBase 〈Windows Store App〉

As I already mentioned on this blog, Caller Information in .NET 4.5 helps to simplify implementation of INotifyPropertyChanged interface. BindableBase class in development for Windows Store uses the same approach and makes it all even simpler.

BindableBase is added to your Visual Studio project (Common folder) with any more advanced page than Blank Page. To create an observable class, you just need to inherit from BindableBase, call SetProperty() in the property setter, pass the field by reference and the value to be set. BindableBase will do the rest. For example:

public class Person : BindableBase
{
    private string name;
    public string Name
    {
        get { return name; }
        set { SetProperty(ref name, value); }
    }
}

Windows 8 commands via Remote Desktop 〈Windows 8〉

If you’re connected via Remote Desktop to Windows 8 (and I expect the same with Windows Server 2012), you can a special menu for Windows 8 functions such as displaying Charms.

In full screen view, you’ll find the menu on the top among other functions for remote desktop.

In windowed mode, right-click the window title:

Volume licenses for external subjects 〈Microsoft Volume Licensing〉

This is a common question and I simply copied the answer from Frequently Asked Questions About Product Licensing.

Question: In our company we have onsite contractors who work on short-term projects. Can we assign Microsoft product licenses (Office, CALs, etc.) which we purchased through our own Volume Licensing agreement to these contractor-owned devices so they use our licensed software for our projects?

Answer: Yes, as long as those licenses are used for the benefit of your company, the licensee, you can assign your licenses to third party devices.

You are limited in how often you can assign your licenses. Volume Licensing product licenses can only be reassigned to other devices every 90 days, not more frequently. If the software will be used for the benefit of the contractors and not your organization then the contractor needs to purchase their own licenses or optionally explore other types of short-term software subscription licenses.

Useful modules 〈Powershell〉

Creating Powershell modules is very simple and a lot of people already did it. But do you know what’s available? Try this list of Popular PowerShell Modules. I’m going to take a closer look at OData PowerShell Explorer, for instance.