Great Plains Dynamics - Integration Nightmare
by dkozin - Written: Mar 29 '01 (Updated Mar 29 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Price
Cons: Data structure, proprietary scripting language, no statement generator, etc.
The Bottom Line: The only positive thing I can say is that other accounting packages we evaluated were either no better or significantly more expensive.
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| dkozin's Full Review: Great Plains Dynamics |
I and my colleagues software developers in our company hate GP.
GP’s user interface is not ideal, some things are frustrating at best. But the worst part is - it is not easy to integrate. Some tasks are impossible to automate.
Examples:
1. The backend (SQL Server 7 in our case) does not have any diagrams, so it is not easy to figure out relationships in the database.
2. The field names are case-sensitive.
3. Tables have non-descriptive names like AF00100 and RM00201. Table RM00201 contains customer classes, RM00101 contains customers, RM00103 – payments, RM10101 – invoices and credits, etc.
4. There are more than 8,500 stored procedures. Well, at least the names are descriptive.
5. They use proprietary scripting language called Sanscript. To automate tasks, the application has to be running and you use Dynamics object library. If something unexpected happens (window pops up, etc.) your script is stuck. Couldn’t they provide an object model similar to MS Office?
6. The data in the backend is not completely normalized.
7. They use “char” type field instead of “varchar”, so the unused portion of the field is padded with spaces, which wastes space.
8. They advertised that the produce was COM-compliant and you can use VBA. Not really (see #5)
9. If the program crashes (which it does) or computer freezes, the system “thinks” you are still connected, which decreases the amount of people who can be logged on at the same time.
10. There is no statement generator. The invoice generator they have cannot be customized – even font cannot be changed.
Some of these drawbacks are caused by the fact that a lot of accounting software is based on the old mainframe systems. But for others it is more difficult to find an explanation.
I believe that the word "Great" should be replace by "will do" or something similar. However the company was recently bought by Microsoft, which should improve things.
The only positive thing I can say is that other accounting packages we evaluated were either no better or significantly more expensive.
Recommended:
No
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