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Hi Jonas,

I'm pretty sure that no company will allow you to set up Dynamicweb to pull information from the ERP SQL database (although I've heard of one company that did). If they do, they should consider sacking the person in charge of their IT operations.

I don't know which ERP system you're trying to integrate, either do I know you skill level, so please bear with me if this is too obvious, but many people have burned their fingers in the attempt to integrate a web site and an ERP system.

Do not base your integration on the ERP SQL database. MS Dynamics products f.i. offer an extensive API, and data entering the ERP should pass here in order to have all business logic related to - e.g. a sales order - processed correctly. If you don't have any experience with the ERP in question, you should get an allied who does, perhaps from the customer or the customer's ERP supplier, or look at some of your fellow Dynamicweb partners, e.g. Columbus IT for Dynamics AX or Norriq Dynamics NAV .

Once you get these things straight, it's time to make the actual integration. You shouldn't let Dynamicweb be in charge of the integration as this would require to open an inbound port in your customer's firewall to interact with the ERP from the webserver. Let the ERP system decide when it wants to post product information and retrieve order information.

When it comes to the actual setup in Import/Export, check out Part 2 of the most recent tech review session where I demonstrated how to set things up: The video is available here: http://developer.dynamicweb.dk/Tech-Review-2008-2-28453.aspx.

/Lars

Hi Lars
 

Thank you for the fast response and for posting the link to the video, which cleared some of my questions

Of course, I see your point about not pulling directly in the ERP SQL, however I don't necessarily find it so bad. The SQL-service provides only the needed information about the products and groups, excactly the same as an outputted XML, and once you get the hang of the correct way to format sales order-drafts it's not that hard.

If I use XML-based input instead and set up 2 pipelines (products an groups) and letting the ERP call the url of the Piperunner I should be able to get around this without customizing the activities (which is great!), and that leaves only the question about returning the sales orders.

Which approach do you suggest here ?

Best regards,

Jonas

There is a standard activity for exporting sales orders. Use that in a pipe line and have the ERP system fetch the exported files and import those.