Often, there is a problem when accessing the DMG’s, in Solomon, where you get an error “Missing Database information.” This is generally caused by a missing or invalid Solomon.ini file.
Step 1:
Validate that you have a good solomon.ini. Contact Catalina for a good solomon.ini file.
Looking at this, there are several things that are important
Normally, Catalina will develop a Data Mapping App which will pull from one system, transform the data pulled, then push into the other system. This creates a situation where a hole is not needed to be opened in the firewall for outside systems to communicate in.
There are several ways that the Data Mapping App could communicate with the external SAAS system:
FTP: The app could send and receive data via an FTP, SFTP file share.
An API: The app could communicate via an API by posting and retrieving data through some type of web based API or Web Service
File Share: Some SAAS systems will communicate simply with files saved in a local fileshare.
The Data Mapping APP will communicate to Dynamics SL through Catalina’s API for SL (either via the SOAP based web services or the RESTful API. The Catalina API would reside inside the firewall on a Windows IIS server. The Catalina API will then communicate with the Dynamics SL database via a SQL Connection.
Retrieving a customer is quite simple. You would perform a GET from Catalina’s API (REST) using the following endpoint: /api/financial/accountsReceivable/customer/{CustID}
Example, if you wanted to retrieve customer C300, you would use this endpoint: /api/financial/accountsReceivable/customer/C300
To do this retrieve in Postman, it would look similar to this:
Saving a New Customer
If you want to save a new customer, you would perform a POST to the following endpoint: /api/financial/accountsReceivable/customer (NOTE: you would NOT post a custID in the URL of the endpoint)
Below is a minimum curl POST that will create a customer. NOTE: if you do not pass a CustID in the request body, SL will automatically select a CustID for you. Also NOTE that if you try to do a POST and pass a CustID in the request body that already exists, the system will give you an error stating that you cant create a new customer with an existing CustID.
If the POST is successful, the API will pass back the newly saved customer. In the response body, you will see the field myCustomer.CustId. That will be the CustID saved (if you passed a valid CustID or if the system automatically set the CustID if you didn’t pass one in the request body)
It would like like this in Postman:
The customer can now be viewed in the SL Customer Maintenance (08.260.00) Screen.
Updating a Customer
If you want to change a customer, you would make a PATCH call to the following endpoint: /api/financial/accountsReceivable/customer/{CustID}
NOTE: you would replace {CustID}, in the URL, with the Customer ID you want to update. So, if you want to update customer 00128, the endpoint would look like this: /api/financial/accountsReceivable/customer/00128
Regarding the request body, you would only pass the fields you want changed. If you want to change the customer’s name, but you don’t want to change anything else, then only pass the Name field with the value you want to change. So, if I wanted to change customer 00128 to have the customer name of “Barny Rubble” instead of “Fred Flintstone,” I would do a call something like this:
For developers, our SOAP version has the definition of this in the WSDL here (NOTE: we have it separated by function/module depending on what you need to do):
Many are starting to use dotnet core as a development environment for many reasons. It is compact, you can easily deploy to Docker containers, you can run cross platform, and many other reasons.
We get a lot of questions on how to use our API, for Dynamics SL, in a dotnet core environment.
If you want to be able to do something with our REST API or SOAP Web services, you may need to have a place to start. If you check out our github dotNETCore repository, you can see examples of both. You can clone the repository using the git client:
This is because Catalina’s API has security where you need to create a hash and pass that hash of the name of the stored procedure (using the same APIKey setup in ctDynamicsSL) so that when the API retrieves your request for the SQL call, it is using the same shared key for the hash encryption.
If you don’t want to do this, you can look at your DSLConfigFile.xml file. Look in the XML block denoted by the SiteID you are using in your header and make sure that this line is there (with the value = TRUE — All Caps). This will disable that checksum check.
It is easy to retrieve most any data from SL using Catalina’s API for Quick Query. Below is an example of how you can use SOAP and .NET to do this. This example shows yow you can retrieve subaccounts
First, you can also call the QuickQuery API via Postman (using the RESTful API) via below (NOTE: this should bring back all sub accounts since we arent filtering for anything.
Below is .NET code using SOAP. I had registered the SOAP web service quickQuery.ASMX and named it ctAPI.QuickQuery. This code shows you how you can retrieve subaccounts in 2 different ways
The first one just brings back all sub accounts
The second call brings back just sub accounts that contain the word “admin” in the Description
public void RunIt()
{
// call the web service, requesting the “QQ_SubAccount” quick query to be run. We will pass an empty filter array so that it will get everything
var returnWithoutFiltering = QuickQueryService.getScreen("QQ_SubAccount", new ctAPI.QuickQuery.queryFilter[0]);
{
// I like to convert to a JArray so that I can do other things with it. but lets loop through each row
Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray myArry = Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.FromObject(returnWithoutFiltering.myQueryResults.Tables[0]);
foreach (var myVal in myArry)
{
Console.WriteLine($"SubAcct: {myVal["Subaccount"].ToString().Trim()}, Descr: {myVal["Description"].ToString().Trim()}");
}
}
Console.WriteLine();
// lets filter all sub accounts that contain the word "admin" in the description
var myFilters = new List<ctAPI.QuickQuery.queryFilter>
{
new ctAPI.QuickQuery.queryFilter {name = "Description", comparisonType = "LIKE", value="%admin%" }
};
// call the web service, requesting the “QQ_SubAccount” quick query to be run. Passing the myFilters array for filtering
var returnWithFiltering = QuickQueryService.getScreen("QQ_SubAccount", myFilters.ToArray());
{
// I like to convert to a JArray so that I can do other things with it. but lets loop through each row
Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray myArry = Newtonsoft.Json.Linq.JArray.FromObject(returnWithFiltering.myQueryResults.Tables[0]);
foreach (var myVal in myArry)
{
Console.WriteLine($"SubAcct: {myVal["Subaccount"].ToString().Trim()}, Descr: {myVal["Description"].ToString().Trim()}");
}
}
}
private ctAPI.QuickQuery.quickQuery _quickQueryService = null;
public ctAPI.QuickQuery.quickQuery QuickQueryService
{
get
{
if (this._quickQueryService == null)
{
this._quickQueryService = new ctAPI.QuickQuery.quickQuery
{
Timeout = 300000,
ctDynamicsSLHeaderValue = new ctAPI.QuickQuery.ctDynamicsSLHeader
{
siteID = "YOURSITEID",
cpnyID = "YOURCPNYID",
licenseKey = "YOURLICENSEKEY",
licenseName = "YOUR LICENSE NAME",
licenseExpiration = "1/1/1900",
siteKey = "YOURSITEKEY",
softwareName = "CTAPI"
}
};
}
return this._quickQueryService;
}
set
{
this._quickQueryService = value;
}
}
Below here is the data structure of a subaccount from the Quick Query QQ_SubAccount
If you are connecting to one of Catalina’s API endpoints (either REST or SOAP) and you are using https://, if you get an error saying the “Connection was Forcibly Closed,” this is normally because the web server requires a specific TLS version and your client isn’t using that.
If you are writing this in .NET, this can be easily overcome by adding this statement before you make a call to our API (it is normally fine to put it in the constructor or in some startup routine):
