Monthly Archives: March 2019

Trace database cleanup in an efficient way

The Trace parser is an excellent tool for troubleshooting business functionality within Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations. Your Trace database can quickly grow large and it does affect the tools’ performance adversely.

Removing the old trace collections one-by-one is time consuming. You could utilize a stored procedure for cleaning up your AX trace database efficiently in SQL:

-- Replace AXTrace with your database name
USE [AXTrace]
GO
 
-- Truncate transaction log to reduce size
DBCC SHRINKFILE (N'AXTrace_log' , 0, TRUNCATEONLY)
GO
 
-- Iterate through the list of traces in the database
DECLARE cur CURSOR FOR 
       SELECT [TraceId] FROM [dbo].[Traces]
 
DECLARE @Id AS int
 
OPEN cur;
FETCH NEXT FROM cur into @Id;
 
-- Remove all traces in the database with the DeleteTrace stored procedure
WHILE (@@FETCH_STATUS = 0)
BEGIN
       EXEC [dbo].[DeleteTrace] @TraceId = @Id
       FETCH NEXT FROM cur into @Id;
END
 
CLOSE cur;
DEALLOCATE cur;
 
-- Truncate transaction log to reduce size
DBCC SHRINKFILE (N'AXTrace_log' , 0, TRUNCATEONLY)
GO
By |2020-03-23T13:21:53+01:00March 31st, 2019|Categories: AX 2012, Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations|Tags: , , , , |0 Comments

Checklist can change AX configuration keys

The other day we ran into a serious issue during our regular Production system maintenance. The Data dictionary synchronization step has started creating indexes with a DEL_ prefix on large tables such as InventTrans. We have quickly identified that AX configuration keys got changed by opening a checklist.

It turned out that some of the users had the System_Checklist security privilege assigned, and they have clicked it by accident. Standard code can add or update License configuration keys when you run the checklist.

In our case only a couple of new entries were activated, such as SysObsoleteObjects60. It has added a lot of DEL_ objects which could be easily rolled back. At another company it has done irreversible damage for inventory dimensions. You could imagine how bad the situation could get if important config keys are turned off. Synchronization would start dropping columns and entire tables.

SysConfig checklist

The quick fix was to use the Export functionality on the License configuration form from our Quality Assurance AX (daily copy of Production). Then we could import the correct configurations to Prod and revert changes by doing a Data dictionary synchronization.

Please ensure that your users only have access to security privileges they really need, to avoid unintentional damage. Remove the System_Checklist and similar features from everyone, except the administrators.

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