It seems like D365 CE/CRM is light years ahead of F&O/Supply Chain in 2 areas:

• Plugin architecture
• Remote debugging

I have been an F&O developer for a few years, and there are 2 main ways I have found to achieve custom & dynamic integrations with F&O:

• OData interactions
• X++ modifications in the model

OData interactions and X++ mods are quite powerful and have enabled me to do lots of stuff BUT as I have learned more about CE plugins, they are really a thing of beauty. I have been playing around with the CE Plugin Registration Tool (hereafter PRT) and there are a few things right off the top that have brought me joy:

• The ability to quite easily build a custom plugin DLL and then link it to a vast array of events within the CE platform.
• The ability to remote debug said plugin right in VS on my local PC. Having done traditional remote debugging with VS for many years, I found the plugin debugger experience via the PRT to be shockingly easy. Almost gasping I am asking "why doesn't F&O have something like this??".

Yes, X++ is powerful and can be debugged in VS. I have done it, and it works. But there are a few big problems:

• F&O cloud instances, with all my company's ISV stuff installed and configured, is quite difficult and requires many hours of heavy lifting.
• As an ISV, I have had customers tell me "there is no way to RD into that F&O environment so that you can debug". Huh?? Need to debug X++ on an F&O test server...too bad, you can't, at least in some cases. Seems like only "dev" cloud instances of F&O allow remoting in and debugging.

In my perfect world, there should ALWAYS be a way to remote debug the X++ in any F&O instance as long as I have valid credentials. There should never be a case where it cannot be done. With the PRT it seems that this wheel has already been invented and the giant already slain. Why not extend that to work with F&O?

Additionally, I love the plugin idea that CE has. F&O needs this. Creating or modifying X++, and then packaging that and deploying it through LCS, and praying you don't break anything, is quite daunting. The plugin idea seems much better. I'm dreaming now of a world in which X++ is thrown in the dust bin and entirely replaced by a CE-style plugin system in which virtually any event, flow, or process can be hooked into, manipulated, interrupted, or modified by use of simple c# plugin DLLs, and remotely debugged through the beautiful PRT and local VS.

Santa Claus: That is what I want for Christmas.