Today I had to switch between several tasks, and during one of those task switches, my brain put on the brakes.
My brain: This is crazy!
Me: What is crazy?
Brain: This! This is crazy! Switching from SQL queries to Dynamics GP VS Tools to an ASP.NET Core web API for Dynamics GP to working with multiple Azure services. And that's just in the last hour! It's nuts!
Me: Uh, hello, we do this every day. So that you're not bored, remember?
Brain: Dude, that doesn't make it any less crazy.
Me: Noted. I'll blog about it just to make you feel better.
If I actually stop for a moment, step back, and look at all of the things I do, all of the tools I use, and all of the things I have to know and understand to do my job, it is kinda crazy.
If you're modest, you might think that this is fairly normal, which in some respects it is--lots of people probably do what you do in the consulting world. But if you want to really appreciate how much you really know, try hiring a 20 year old intern and give them a few small projects. You'll quickly realize that the "simple" task you gave the intern requires tons of fundamental knowledge that informs how to perform the task. It probably took you years to develop that fundamental knowledge, and then many more years on top of that to develop competence or mastery.
Let's start with SQL. In the Dynamics GP consulting world, a basic understanding of SQL Server and T-SQL is pretty much essential.
"Hey intern, can you run this query?"
"What's a query?"
"It's a way to get data out of SQL Server."
"SQL Server?"
"Yes, SQL Server is a relational database."
"Relational?"
"Nevermind, just launch Management Studio and connect to the GP SQL instance"
"GP SQL instance?"
These steps may seems obvious, and is probably invisible to you if you've been doing it for years, but every single step requires an entire fundamental skill stack to perform even a basic task.
So you need to know how to work with Management Studio. How to connect to a SQL instance. How to write some T-SQL. It's a good to understand SQL databases, tables, stored procedures, and views. Maybe triggers and cursors if you're daring. And how about backups and transaction logs and Recovery Model, just in case there's a problem?
If you're on the bleeding edge, you'll know how to backup SQL Server databases to Azure. Which means you should be familiar with SQL jobs and Azure Storage and backup compression. And Azure is an entire universe of knowledge.
But back to Dynamics GP. How about SET files and dictionaries and chunk files and shared dictionaries and modified forms and reports and AddIns and Modifier & VBA? And there's all the knowledge around GL, AP, AR, SOP, POP, and IV, not to mention the other ancillary modules like AA, PA, FA, MC, CM, IC, HR, UPR, and others. You know that one checkbox under Tools -> Setup -> Posting -> Posting? Ya, that one that affects whether transaction posting hits the GL? Or what about that option in the SOP Type ID that affects inventory allocation and quantity overrides? Or the hundreds of other options you kinda need to be aware of?
And naturally, since you're working with an accounting system, it's good to understand debits vs credits and income statement vs balance sheet and cash vs income vs expenses vs assets vs liabilities. And if you're into reporting, there's the entire universe of standard reporting tools and financial reporting tools.
In my particular line of work, I also need to understanding everything from Excel macros to VBA to VB Script to Integration Manager to eConnect to SmartConnect. I need to know how to use .NET 2.5 through .NET Core 2.0 using Visual Studio 2010 through 2017. I need to thoroughly understand IIS and Kestrel, TCP/IP, ports, firewalls, DNS, HTTPS, TLS, SSH, and nmap. I need to know HMAC, AES, and SHA and have a fairly good understanding encryption.
I need to be able to glance at XML and JSON and quickly find data issues. I need to know what HTTP verbs and response codes mean, as well as what "idempotent" means (that's actually a word). I need to understand TXT and CSV parsing and the issues related to using Excel files as data sources. I need to be able to review thousands of entries in a log file and figure out why two identical requests were processed 3 milliseconds apart, and that's only after I figure out how to reliably log activity with millisecond precision.
I need to understand PCI compliance and how to call credit card gateway APIs for CC and ACH tokenization and transaction processing. And then there's the TLS 1.2 upgrade saga--don't get me started on that one.
And while writing some complex queries years ago, I needed to figure out why they were taking hours to run. So I had to give myself a crash course SQL query optimization so that I didn't kill the SQL Server. Which led to me developing a subspeciality in amateur SQL Server optimization, which can be quite challenging in the Dynamics GP world. And if you're dealing with GP performance, it's helpful to understand virtualization and be familiar with Hyper-V and VMWare and how VM memory settings affect SQL Server.
And the list goes on and on. It's a really, really long list of stuff you need to learn and know and understand and use on a regular basis.
It's kinda crazy.
But that's also why I like it.
Steve Endow is a Microsoft MVP in
Los Angeles. He is the owner of Precipio Services, which provides
Dynamics GP integrations, customizations, and automation solutions.
Some days that's exactly how I feel too :-D .. but as you said, it's kind of normal life for someone that has been in IT for 35+ years and though I started as a COBOL programmer on IBM mainframes, I came a long way until I found my 'niche' in IT and started loving GP.. But IT is an ever-moving beast and as such you never stop learning.. just keep going :-)
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