Practical Salesforce Architecture

Practical Salesforce Architecture

by Paul McCollum
Released October 2023
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9781098138288

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Book description

Once renowned as a customer relationship management tool, Salesforce has evolved into a cloud-first application and capability ecosystem. With dedicated components for tasks such as middleware, big data, reporting, ETL, data loading, and API orchestration, Salesforce has become more prevalent in modern architectures.

This concise yet comprehensive guide provides an overview of Salesforce architecture for enterprise architects and Salesforce ecosystem architects. Author Paul McCollum, Salesforce Technical Architect at Accenture, provides a roadmap for integrating major elements of the Salesforce ecosystem with planned or existing enterprise architecture. You'll learn how to use these components to address the diverse needs of different organizations.

Many companies today are adding or building multicloud capabilities and incorporating various elements from the Salesforce ecosystem. With this book, you'll learn:

  • Strengths, weaknesses, and growth areas of Salesforce's enterprise architecture domain features
  • How Salesforce compares to other cloud providers
  • Methods for using the Salesforce ecosystem effectively to address your organization's needs
  • How to integrate Salesforce with planned or existing enterprise architectures
  • Ways to manage and forecast performance, complexity, and ease of operation across the Salesforce platform

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Table of contents

  1. Foreword (…Looking Statement)
    1. Who This Book Is For
    2. Why I Wrote This Book
    3. What This Book Will Not Attempt
    4. How This Book Is Organized
    5. Architecture Versus “Market-tecture”
    6. Mental Hurdles and the Best Features of Salesforce
    7. Conventions Used in This Book
    8. O’Reilly Online Learning
    9. How to Contact Us
    10. Acknowledgments
  2. 1. Main Application Functionality and Capabilities
    1. Salesforce and Clouds
    2. What’s in a Name?
  3. 2. How It All Works
    1. Basic Concepts of the “Full Stack”
    2. Basic Product Stacks
    3. Physical Systems and Infrastructure Concepts
      1. Multitenant
      2. Oracle
      3. Hyperforce (the Future of the “Metal”)
    4. Enterprise Architecture Capabilities
      1. PaaS
      2. Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS)
      3. Business Intelligence
      4. Documents and Collaboration
      5. Collaboration and Chat
      6. BPM, RPA, and Low-Code
      7. Application Development
      8. Extensible Headless Compute (Lambdas)
    5. Enterprise Software Capabilities
      1. Platforms
      2. Components
      3. Features
      4. Applications
    6. Functional Capabilities and Products
    7. Summary
  4. 3. Platform Data Concepts
    1. Basic Technical Architecture of an RDBMS
    2. Tables and Rows
    3. Relationships
    4. RecordTypes
    5. Triggers and Flows
    6. Big Objects (NoSQL)
    7. External Objects (Mapped Data Sync) and Files
    8. Remote Data Queries
    9. Flat File Data
    10. The Good
    11. The Gotchas
    12. The Growth
    13. Summary
  5. 4. Data and Architecture Constraints
    1. Complexity Boundaries
    2. Size Boundaries
    3. Compute Boundaries
    4. I/O Boundaries
    5. Object Polymorphism (Reusing Objects)
    6. Built-in Advanced Database Functionality
    7. Geography
    8. Iterative Design
    9. Master Data Management
    10. Reporting
    11. Bulk Import of Data
    12. The Good
    13. The Gotchas
    14. The Growth
    15. Summary
  6. 5. Middleware and Connectivity
    1. For Aspiring Architects
    2. Outbound: Server-Side Calls
    3. Inbound: Remote System Calls
      1. Client (Browser) Side
      2. Middleware
    4. Event-Driven Architecture
    5. OAuth
    6. The Good
    7. The Gotchas
    8. The Growth
    9. Summary
  7. 6. Collaboration
    1. Collaboration Is More Than Just Sharing
    2. Chatter
    3. Groups
    4. Teams
    5. Files
    6. Reports
    7. Quip
    8. Slack
    9. The Good
    10. The Gotchas
    11. The Growth
    12. Summary
  8. 7. Security
    1. Single Sign-on
    2. Identity Management
    3. Encryption
    4. Permission Containers
      1. Profiles
      2. Roles
      3. Permissions, Permission Sets, and Permission Set Groups
      4. Manual Sharing
    5. Effective Permissions
    6. The Good
    7. The Gotchas
    8. The Growth
    9. Summary
  9. 8. Programming and Customization
    1. How to Discern Platform Capabilities
    2. Customization Options and Limits
    3. Coding Options
      1. Apex
      2. Visualforce
      3. Aura
      4. Lightning Web Components
      5. Flows
      6. Process Builder (Deprecated)
      7. Workflow Rules (Deprecated)
      8. Salesforce Functions
    4. Package Development and Use
    5. The Good
    6. The Gotchas
    7. The Growth
    8. Summary
  10. 9. Mobile Platforms and Customization
    1. Mobile Application Types
    2. Salesforce Mobile App
    3. Salesforce Mobile Publisher
    4. Salesforce Field Service
    5. The Good
    6. The Gotchas
    7. The Growth
    8. Summary
  11. 10. DevOps Systems and Patterns
    1. Development Orgs (Sandboxes and Pipelines)
    2. Metadata
    3. Change Sets
    4. DevOps Center
    5. Validation and Test Code Coverage
    6. Integrated Development Environments
    7. Source Code Management Tools
    8. Project and Team Management Tools
    9. Orchestration Tools
    10. Vulnerability Checking and Code Compliance Tools
    11. Designing for DevOps and Release Management (Beware of “Darkitecture”)
    12. The Good
    13. The Gotchas
    14. The Growth
    15. Summary
  12. 11. The Architect
    1. Builders Versus Architects
    2. The Different Types of Architect Roles
      1. Success Architect
      2. Operational (Project) Architect
      3. Solution Architect
      4. UX Architect
      5. The Certified Technical Architect (CTA)
    3. Communication
      1. Documentation
      2. Selecting What to Document or Diagram
    4. Diagramming Practices
      1. Where Should I Start?
      2. What Are the Key Concepts/Groups? (Level 0)
      3. What Are the Important Details? (Level 1)
      4. The Details (Levels 2+)
      5. Where Does It Stop?
    5. Acting Like an Architect
    6. Summary
  13. 12. Salesforce Well-Governed
    1. Data Governance
      1. Concern: Data Interpretation
      2. Governance Strategies: Data Interpretation
      3. Concern: Data Fields and Relationships
      4. Governance Strategies: Data Fields and Relationships
      5. Concern: Data Storage
      6. Governance Strategies: Data Storage
    2. Security
      1. Concern: Data Security
      2. Governance Strategies: Data Security
      3. Concern: Sandbox Security
      4. Governance Strategies: Sandbox Security
    3. Customization
      1. Concern: Code Organization
      2. Governance Strategies: Code Organization
      3. Concern: Automation Orchestration
      4. Governance Strategies: Automation Orchestration
      5. Concern: Nimble Versus Stable
      6. Governance Strategies: Time to Market Versus Stability
    4. Summary
  14. 13. Roll-up and Summary
  15. Index
  16. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Practical Salesforce Architecture
  • Author(s): Paul McCollum
  • Release date: October 2023
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9781098138288