Interesting Things in AX 2012 Installiaton & Administration

AX 2012 Integrated installation of service packs and updates

In previous releases, you could install service packs and updates
only after the Microsoft Dynamics AX installation was completed. Therefore,
depending on the number of updates that were available, you had to run several
installation wizards to complete the deployment. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012,
service packs and quarterly roll-up updates can be integrated into the
Microsoft Dynamics AX installation. This kind of installation is known as a
“slipstreamed” installation. If updates are available when you deploy
Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, you can download them to the location of the
installation source. When you run Setup from the updated installation source,
all updates are applied automatically.

AX 2012 Flexible authentication

Since Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, user authentication has been
based on Active Directory. All users have been required to be domain users.
Even external users of Enterprise Portal have had to be domain users. To help
secure other data on the network, the administrator had to set up group
policies to prevent external users from accessing that data. In Microsoft
Dynamics AX 2012, users can be authenticated by using methods other than Active
Directory. Therefore, external users no longer require domain accounts to
access Microsoft Dynamics AX. For more information, see Configure Enterprise
Portal flexible authentication

AX 2012 Security

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, security is role-based, and many security roles are predefined to make security easier to set up. In role-based security, users are assigned to roles based on their responsibilities in the organization and their participation in business processes. The administrator no longer has to identify application objects and grant access to those objects. Instead, the administrator grants access to the duties that users in a role perform. Because rules can be set up for automatic role assignment, the administrator does not have to be involved every time that a user’s responsibilities change. After security roles and rules have been set up, role assignments can be updated based on changes in business data

AX 2012 Database side changes

SQL Server-based databases

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, you must create your Microsoft
Dynamics AX database on Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 does
not support creating the Microsoft Dynamics AX database on Oracle database
server. All other databases, such as the databases that are used for Microsoft
SharePoint 2010 products and Reporting Services, also require SQL Server.

Application files are now stored in the database

The previous version of Microsoft Dynamics AX stored the
application files, or AOD files, that contained Microsoft Dynamics AX metadata
on a file share. In this version, application objects are stored in the
Microsoft Dynamics AX database, and are managed as model files.

Fixed schema

This version of Microsoft Dynamics AX has a fixed schema, which
means that tables and fields are no longer dropped and then added again when
license or configuration keys are changed. This change applies to all tables
and fields, except for some that are used during upgrade (SysDeletedObjectsXX),
which are dropped when the relevant configuration keys are disabled in a
production environment.This change was made to better support Analysis Services
cubes in Role Centers.

Full-text search

In this version, Microsoft Dynamics AX provides full-text search,
which lets you search business data over a large volume of text data or
documents. Full-text search also supports additional features, such as
language-specific word breakers, stemmers, and extensible APIs. You can create
a full-text index on tables that are associated with the table types Main or Group.