Microsoft released the Dynamics 365 on November 01, 2016. With that Microsoft also release the VM for the solution as well – you can download it from https://connect.microsoft.com/site1321/Downloads
(You need to be registered in the feedback program to download)
After setting it all up, I tried to publish the entities to external database. It all looked easy, but while trying to do faced some exceptions as it was not able to find assemblies to actually execute the publish commands.
Below is the first error received, the SMO assembly for SQL Server was not loaded. 
Now to resolve this follow below steps:
- You can find this and other related assemblies in the C:\AOSService\PackagesLocalDirectory\Bin folder for your local VM.
- After locating the assembly – drag it to c:\windows\assembly folder on your local VM. It will register it in the GAC. Don’t get confused by the assembly version in the properties of it. It will correctly display as 13.100.0.0 in the GAC.
- Restart the “Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations – Data Import/Export Framework Service” from windows services
- Reset IIS from Command prompt running in Administrator mode
- Refresh the Dynamics AX, and publish the entities again after selecting
When you will refresh the page – you will see “published” column indicating the successful operation.
The database chosen for this will have the Schema published for the selected entities. Please note the name of the columns will be different than what actually are in the actual AX tables. I am sure you can change them – but that’s for some next article.
Example: SalesTable.SalesId == SalesOrderHeaderEntityStaging.SalesOrderNumber … (In Staging)
Next, you can use “Export” framework to export data to this database. Will find some time soon to go through further details on it. In the mean time please see Microsoft wiki on the topic. It’s a great help.
- https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/using-data-entities-and-data-packages/
- https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dynamicsaxbi/2016/07/27/export-dynamics-ax7-entities-to-your-own-azure-sql-database/
- https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/using-data-entities-and-data-packages/#export
Until next time … Enjoy!
Rizwan Ahmed 