Hi All,
Previously I had quite a lot of questions about how to integrate development done on Acumatica Framework with Acumatica ERP.
Usually them main reason of that question is misunderstanding of what is Acumatica Framework.
Acumatica Framework (what you can download as separate installer from portal) is designed to develop product that is completely separated from Acumatica ERP. That is why there are less functions and no code integration with ERP.
In case you are see benefits of using functions form Acumatica ERP (like segmented keys, numbering, accounts, subaccounts, customers/vendors, inventory items), it would be much better to start development on Acumatica ERP itself from the beginning, and do not use Acumatica Framework at all.
T300 – Acumatica Customization Platform training guide exactly explains you how to create new functionality with close connection to ERP and even how to use Visual Studio without installing Framework.
Difference between ERP and Framework
The main misunderstanding I faced before here is that based on the name you may expect that Framework should be installed prior to ERP (like .NET Framework), but that is not correct.
When you install Acumatica ERP, framework is already included there and does not require separate installations.
If to dig little bit in the details, Acumatica Framework consists on multiple system libraries: PX.Common.dll, PX.Data.dll, PX.Web.UI.dll, set of system screens as aspx file and so on. Comparing to that almost whole Acumatica ERP is included into one PX.Objects.dll and set of screens as aspx files.
So if to simplify it little bit – ERP contains all possible dlls, but Framework missing some of them with business logic. Other things are absolutely the same.
Based on description above you can understand that you can develop absolutely the same way on Acumatica ERP as you do in on Acumatica Framework. And even more ERP gives you much more benefits as it has a lot of nice business logic that you can reuse and save cost on development.
There still is one real difference of Framework comparing to ERP – Framework has function to deploy templates of forms that you can create from Visual Studio.
However that is not really needed as you can use Acumatica Customization Tools to generate forms and DACs. You can read more about it here and here.
That misunderstanding comes to T100 and T200 training guides where you learning how to develop new functionality using Framework. Later you think that it is the proper way of doing new development.
However it just shows you that you can use Acumatica Framework without ERP at all and does not limit you on such ways. In T300 training guide you also learn how you can use ERP directly do so same development including programming in Visual Studio.
As I know later Automatic’s team will update training guides to new flow, so it should eliminate that misunderstanding, and it all will be fine.
Have a nice development!