When developing in Dynamics CRM, sooner or later you will find a requirement to perform some type of database operation.
In Dynamics CRM 4.0 we had to the choice of creating raw SOAP requests or by using a library from Ascenitum (later Avanade), to perform these operations.
When upgrading to Dynamics CRM 2011, you have two choices:
Convert to an internal Dynamics CRM method
Some of the functionality will actually convert into native Dynamics CRM 2011 or 2013 functionality so I would advise that you go that router when possible. (we’ve already covered my philosophy about having as little code as possible).
Using a data access library:
There are several data access libraries available, through the Dynamics CRM SDK or available on CodePlex.
- XrmSvcToolkit
- XrmServiceToolkit
- jQuery
- SDK.REST (CRM SDK)
- SDK.JQUERY (CRM SDK)
Take a look at the CRM Rest Builder add-in to help you rewrite some of this functionality.
The Goal
The main goal of this process is to reduce the amount of code you have to maintain and they provides cross-browser support. SOAP calls take up a lot of space and usually many lines of code. If you can replace them with calls to library methods, you can reduce your main libraries dramatically.
