This document discusses the unit of work design pattern in Microsoft Dynamics AX. It introduces unit of work as a way to perform CRUD operations sequentially as a single transaction. This improves performance over individual database hits and ensures referential integrity. Advantages include not needing to hold parent record IDs, ability to insert data in a single trip, and better performance. A demo compares inserting many records via individual inserts versus using a unit of work, showing the latter is on average 3 times faster.

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2. Design Pattern: Unit of work
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Agenda:
• Introduction: Unit of work
• Why the need arises?
• Advantages
• Demo

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Unit of work:
1. Framework introduced in AX 2012
2. Collection of operations CRUD, performed sequentially and as a
unit.
3. Enables the number of records to be committed in single
transaction

5. Clear Clears all the changes
DeleteonSaveChanges Deletes the record on commit/save changes
InsertOnSaveChanges Inserts the record on commit /save changes
UpdateOnSaveChanges Updates the record on commit /save changes
SaveChanges Save the changes on the server
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Possible operations:

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Why the need arises?
1. Main purpose: Referential integrity.
2. Bulk of data and insertion issue
3. We need to hold recId of parent and pass to child.
4. Hit the database with each insertion.

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Advantages:
1. We don’t have to hold the recId of parent
2. We can insert data in a single trip
3. Much better performance
4. Maintain proper links between two different record buffers

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CreateNavigationPropertyMethods:
• Available for foreign key relation
• If the property set to Yes, it makes the kernel-generated methods
on a table buffer to be created.
• Use these methods to set, retrieve and navigate to the related
table buffer through the specified relation.

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Demo: Many Insert calls VS UnitOfWork
Create two tables and make foreign key
relation between them. Set the property
CreateNavigationPropertyMethods of
Relations to Yes.

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Make a class and create a method which can insert records in database using
insert commands.

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Average time: 0.56 seconds
Call the class through a job.
Below is the 3 recordings of the result.

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Create another class in which you can insert records using UnitOfWork
framework.

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Average time : 0.18 seconds
3 times better performance
Now call this class through a job.
Below is the 3 recordings of the result.

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