Performance Killing Mistake No 2: Is your system bogged down with too much code?

Just like our formatted search capabilities that I mentioned in my previous post, the SAP Business One Software Developers Kit or SDK is a great tool and I have seen some developers do some fantastic things with the capabilities of both the DI API (Data Interace API) and the UI (User Interface) API.

But as Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben points out to our erstwhile hero in the first Spiderman film, “with great power comes great responsibility”.And with the SDK the same thing applies.I wanted to focus this post on 2 key areas where I have seen implementations getting bogged down in too much SDK and seeing that power suddenly turn against the implementation.

Don’t let your system get bogged down with too much custom code

Point 1 – Too many add-ons

Whilst most of you will never get to the extremes I encountered on one site (25 separate add-ons) sometimes it doesnt take long to end up with 5 or more add-ons all trying to work together and stretching the boundaries of your B1 deployment. Its not uncommon to have multiple add-ons, or complementary solutions as I like to call them, running on a single deployment however it starts getting out of control when you (as a customer) or potentially your partner, starts building multiple code bites to address specific issues in a deployment.

Even though we have taken some steps to make it possible to re-use an existing instance of the API’s running already from another complementary solution, each additional add-on will chew up some memory and this becomes even more of an issue once you are deploying in a cloud environment (either private or public).

So, the secret here is to always try to combine your customer specific add-ons in to a single compiled solution and you’ll avoid the overhead and management hassles of too many complementary solutions.

Point 2 – Teaching Pigs to Sing

When bidding for projects, occasionally over-enthusiastic sales engineers can start to mistakenly say yes to all kinds of functional requirements that the customer may have or need, or think they want or need based on some snappy sales work from a competitor.

Of course, the challenge as the philosopher of Country Music, Kenny Rogers once sang, is to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away and know when to run……

SAP Business One meets the broad needs of many customers across many industries and many countries – more than 35, 000 at last count, but it isnt the solution for everyone and it doesn’t fit every situation.

So you do need to know and not be afraid to say, sorry, we cant provide what you are looking for…dont forget, there are other solutions in the SAP Product Portfolio that may fit the bill and you can refer your potential customer, or if you are a potential customer, you can look at those solutions.

Dont end up with a solution that just cant do what you want it to…trying to bend it in to shape with too much SDK code is a bit like trying to teach pigs to sing…at the end of the day all you end up doing is wasting your time and annoying the pig!.