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From the Microsoft Dynamics CRM blogs: Farewell ExtensionBase tables; Auto-copy address data; SSIS integration tip; Santa CRM

by Linda Rosencrance
Contributing Writer, MSDW

A selection of the latest insight from the Dynamics CRM blogs:

  • From the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Blogs: CRM 2013 - No More ExtensionBase Tables;
  • Address Copy Button with CRM 2013 Business Rules and Workflows
  • A Tip for Testing SSIS Integration with Dynamics CRM;
  • Even Santa Claus Uses PowerPack;

CRM 2013 - No More ExtensionBase Tables

David Jannaway, founding member of Excitation Ltd., a Microsoft partner in the UK, focuses here on "an obscure technical change" - one that he welcomes - that makes a significant contribution to the stability and performance of CRM 2013.

Jannaway said with CRM 3.0, Microsoft changed the underlying table structure so that any customizable entity was split across two tables - a base table that contained all system attributes, and an extensionbase table for custom attributes. For example, he said there was an accountbase and an accountextensionbase table. And each table used the entity's key as the primary key, and the extensionbase table also had a foreign key constraint from the primary key field to the primary key in the base table. Each entity has a SQL view that joined the data from these table to make it appear as one table to the platform.

"As I understand it, the main reason for this design was to allow for more custom attributes, as SQL Server had a row-size limit of 8060 bytes, and some of the system attributes were already using ~6000 bytes. The same table design was retained in CRM 4.0 and CRM 2011. However, CRM 2011 introduced a significant change to the plugin execution pipeline, which allowed custom plugins ...

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CRM 2013 Customer Relationship Mgmt Data Integration Dynamics CRM Workflow Management xRM
About Linda Rosencrance

Linda Rosencrance is a freelance writer/editor in the Boston area. Rosencrance has over 25 years experience as an reporter/investigative reporter, writing for many newspapers in the metropolitan Boston area. Rosencrance has been writing about information technology for the past 16 years.

She has covered a variety of IT subjects, including Microsoft Dynamics, mobile security issues such as data loss prevention, network management, secure mobile app development, privacy, cloud computing, BI, big data, analytics, HR, CRM, ERP, and enterprise IT.

Rosencrance is the author of six true crime books for Kensington Publishing Corp.

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