FAQ

SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP

Frequently asked questions on Licensing, Development, and Deployment

Dynamics GP

Why did you decide to directly interact with Dynamic GP's eConnect stored procedures instead of utilizing Dynamic GP webservices or eConnect?

We felt that Dynamic GP's web services did not make enough functionality available that would otherwise be available through eConnect. And the complexity involved in creating properly structured XML documents for eConnect made the integration experience unfriendly. By directly interacting with eConnect stored procedures, all functionality available in eConnect can be utilized without having to exchange XML documents.

I ran into a problem while executing one of your components. SSIS returned a generic response with an error number. E.g. [Dynamics GP NextDocNumber] Error: Problem generating Next Document Number: 3388. What is that number?

The number (3388 in the above example) is the ErrorCode returned from the Dynamics GP Stored Procedure. You can query the table Dynamics.dbo.taErrorCodes to find what the Error Description is.

Does the tool support custom stored procedures that are created in Dynamics GP database?

Yes, it does. In the case that you need to work with custom stored procedures that you have created in Dynamics GP database, you can navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\KingswaySoft\SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP\Schemas or C:\Program Files\KingswaySoft\SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP\Schemas folder, and make modification to those schema files accordingly by adding the schema of your procedures.

Make sure that you make a full backup of the file before you make any changes so that you have a working copy that can be used as a reference.

In case that you want to store the schema files under a specific folder which is different from the default one, you can do so by adding a registry entry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\KingswaySoft\SSIS Integration Toolkit for Microsoft Dynamics GP by adding a new entry called SchemaDirectory which points to the folder where you store your schema files.

Licensing

Do I need a trial license to evaluate the software? 

You do not need to acquire a license if you just want to test out the software functionality within the development tools (SSDT-BI, BIDS - Business Intelligence Development Studio, or Visual Studio). After installation, the software will operate under the free developer license by default. With the developer license, you can create and develop data flows within the development tools, including executing test loads without requiring a commercial license. 

If you want to evaluate whether the software functions properly outside of the development tools (SSDT-BI, BIDS, or Visual Studio), you can acquire a trial license using the License Manager program which is installed along with the software. After you have acquired a trial license, you will be able to run SSIS packages on a scheduled basis, or from any other Windows process such as command line. The trial software will operate fully-functional for the trial period, which is generally 14 days. When the trial period expires, the software will revert back to the free developer license. 

What are the limitations of the free developer license? 

The free developer license is fully-functional within your development tools (SSDT-BI, BIDS, or Visual Studio). The main limitation is the inability to run the software outside your development tools. In addition, you should not use the free development license for production purposes (mainly production data extraction or data load).

What's the difference between subscription license and perpetual license? 

There is no functionality difference between subscription license and perpetual license. However, with a subscription license, your capability to run the software outside the development tools (such as running SSIS packages on a scheduled basis) is limited to your subscription period. With the perpetual license, you can run the designated version of software within or outside the development tools (SSDT-BI, BIDS, or Visual Studio) for as long as you want.

Development

How do I upgrade the software? What precautions should I take?

We always recommend keeping our software up-to-date. There are new features and enhancements along with bug fixes that are implemented into our products every release. In order to upgrade a licensed system to the latest software release, you need to make sure that you have up-to-date software maintenance for that particular license, which you can find out by checking the Maintenance Expiry Date after launching the KingswaySoft License Manager program. You need to make sure that your maintenance date is greater than the release date of a particular version that you want to upgrade to. In case that your software maintenance has expired, you can reach out to us for a renewal quote, we will be happy to assist you. Note that software maintenance is only applicable to perpetual licenses, not subscription licenses, as software maintenance is always included in subscription license, in which case you can upgrade to any version as long as your subscription has not expired. For the free developer license, you have the same freedom to upgrade, but we typically recommend you stay with that same version that you use for your production environment to maintain the maximum compatibility when you deploy SSIS packages.

Once you have confirmed you have an up-to-date maintenance that qualifies you for the upgrade, then you can proceed with the upgrade process. Best practices would be to uninstall the old version before installing the new version (our software does support in-place upgrade without having to uninstall first, but there are cases the in-place upgrade doesn't clean up the old version properly). We usually try to maintain maximum backward compatibility so your packages will continue to work after the upgrade. However, you will want to pay attention to any Breaking Changes that may have been introduced between versions, in which case you may need to make changes to your SSIS packages to work with the new version that you are upgrading to. It is highly possible that those Breaking Changes (if any at all) may not even affect you, in which case you do not need to do anything with your packages to have them work with the newer version.

We generally recommend you try out our new release in a DEV or test environment before implementing the new version in your production environment.

Information on any Breaking Changes can be found on our Change Log page. Some of those changes can be addressed by simply refreshing the component, while the others may require some additional efforts.

Deployment

When I attempt to deploy an SSIS package or when executing an SSIS Package on SQL Server Management Studio for SQL Server 2014, I receive the following error message 'Unexpected Termination' (or System.AccessViolationException).

When using SQL Server 2014, a cumulative update is required (cumulative update 2 or later, or any recent service packs). The following is the list for the download links.