There has been a some coverage of the upcoming version of the next version of Dynamics CRM, currently code-named Orion, and the changes that will need to be made prior to the upgrade.
Here are a couple:
- Permalink to CRM 4 Support- End of the Line! Time to Upgrade Folks! or fall 2 versions behind!
- Ready Or Not, Orion Is Coming
One thing that I don’t think a lot of people have considered is the end of support for the CRM 4.0 web service endpoint.
What is that exactly? Well, it’s the web service that .Net and JavaScript developers use to interact with CRM’s data services.
Microsoft typically supports only the current and previous endpoints and since the CRM 4.0 endpoint is –2, it will be dropped.
What does that mean for you?
Well, if you have any .Net code that uses the programming patterns for CRM 4.0, then you’ll be rewriting all of your C# and VB.Net code to, at minimum, the CRM 2011 object model.
While this will be a painful process, it is actually a good thing. The CRM team made tremendous changes between CRM 4.0 and CRM 2011 and improved the lives of the .Net developer quite substantially.
They simplified the object model, introduced native .Net data types and over-all, brought the level of the CRM SDK up to today’s programming standards.
So again, even though this will be a painful process, it will be good in the long run.
Stay tuned, I will have some guidance to assist with the conversion of your .Net code soon. I start the second of two back-to-back code upgrades next week and I am taking notes that I will share to hopefully help other developers save time and trouble.
