MS Dynamics Reverse Engineering

[Matt@NWIS]

Crazy thought : anyone have experience of using EA's reverse engineering on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation?

[Geert Bellekens]

We reverse engineered the databases (AX and SDAS in SQL server) and I wrote a tool to import the relations from the .erx (Erwin) export out of AX.
https://github.com/GeertBellekens/Enterprise-Architect-Toolpack/tree/master/ERXImporter

This gives us the database including relations (since there are no foreign keys on the database)

Geert

[Sunshine]

Crazy thought : anyone have experience of using EA's reverse engineering on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation?

Sorry not tried that but does sound crazy idea as I thought a standard clause in most licence agreements is you weren't allowed to reverse engineer the software. So best advice is check the licence agreement on MS Dynamics CRM and if it does have a clause about not reverse engineering the software don't do it.

[Matt@NWIS]

Sorry not tried that but does sound crazy idea as I thought a standard clause in most licence agreements is you weren't allowed to reverse engineer the software. So best advice is check the licence agreement on MS Dynamics CRM and if it does have a clause about not reverse engineering the software don't do it.

Ah - there's a difference though (isn't there?) between the (correctly observed) illegal reverse engineering of core product, and the reverse engineering of your own IP that has been implemented on that core product. Of course, in trying to get the latter one should avoid getting the former.

Thanks Geert

Presumably, to address Sunshine's real concern, you can be selective in what you import?

[Geert Bellekens]

Presumably, to address Sunshine's real concern, you can be selective in what you import?

Our partner delivers a DDL with only the tables used by our application. (we don't need the table for the Russian tax on alcohol, and others like that
Creating a model of their SQL database is probably not against the rules (I suppose)
The ERX is created with standard tool provided by MS Dynamics for the exact purpose of getting a model of the tables and the relations (in Erwin)
Can't see how using that info to create a model in EA could violate any rules.

Geert

[Eve]

Ah - there's a difference though (isn't there?) between the (correctly observed) illegal reverse engineering of core product, and the reverse engineering of your own IP that has been implemented on that core product. Of course, in trying to get the latter one should avoid getting the former.

Yes, but can you actually extract your IP without some level of reverse engineering of the core product? You are reverse engineering how the core product reads and writes in order to determine the meaning of the contents.

It would appear to be a grey area.

[Sunshine]

Sorry not tried that but does sound crazy idea as I thought a standard clause in most licence agreements is you weren't allowed to reverse engineer the software. So best advice is check the licence agreement on MS Dynamics CRM and if it does have a clause about not reverse engineering the software don't do it.

Ah - there's a difference though (isn't there?) between the (correctly observed) illegal reverse engineering of core product, and the reverse engineering of your own IP that has been implemented on that core product. Of course, in trying to get the latter one should avoid getting the former.

Thanks Geert

Presumably, to address Sunshine's real concern, you can be selective in what you import?

Now the truth of the matter is coming out with more information. 
How is your IP implemented in Dynamics? I recall may years back there was a way to configure Dynamics with custom tables,screens etc. however I believe there is a way to use PowerApps to customise it now.