Thursday 31 May 2012

Ax 2012 : Edit model manifest properties using Axutil

We can edit the model manifest properties like name,version number,description and publisher by using Axutil commands. In this post I'll create a new model and then edit its version number by using Axutil command.

1. Create a new model : In order to create a new model, go to Tools --> Model Management --> select Create model as shown below.


A new Create model form will open and here we can specify model properties. 
Note - I have given version number as 1.0.0.0. We will change this later.


2. Open command prompt: Now an easy way to open the command prompt to execute axutil commands is to navigate to the bin folder of the server and press shift and right click on the folder. A menu will be displayed. From the menu select open command window here:


Now you will see the following screen.


3. View existing models: In order to view the list of all the installed models we need to type the following command : axutil list


4: Edit the property: The syntax of the command used to edit the properties of a model is as following:
axutil edit /model:<modelname> /manifest:PropertyName=Value 


Now we type the command to edit the manifest property "Version" and assign a new version number: 1.100.3205.500
(P.S. --> Property name in the command is case sensitive. In case you type the property name as "version" then it gives an error. Also, we can specify the model Id instead of model name in the command.)




5. Check the updated version number : Now we again list the models to see the updated version number of the model




In this post we have seen how we can edit the value of a model property using axutil.


Refer to the below MSDN link to see the details of the axutil edit command
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh433512.aspx