Building On Demand Apps On Force.com

Building On-Demand Apps over Force.com Guneet Sahai Co-Founder Chahiye.info

What is Salesforce.com ?
Historically
An online CRM solution application.
Helped Organizations manage their Sales Data
Currently
Has opened up its platform in a way that it allows building any kind of on-demand application without writing much code.

Force.com
On-Demand platform from Salesforce for building, sharing and running Business Applications.
Salient Features
Hosted, Multi-tenant Environment
Accessible from a web browser anywhere on the web
No need to maintain servers, databases
No need to maintain softwares
No need to worry on scaling up
Development
Comes with built-in point and click functionality that helps in developing apps quickly.
Zero or Very little coding required.
Extensible
Provides Web Services API to expose data & functions outside SF
Allows Apex Programming to take control of back-end logic
Provides Visual Force API to take control of the front-end.

What kind of Apps can be built over Force.com?
Almost any kind

Example App - Tech Support Mgmt
Email Management
Issue Management
Sale Management
Escalation Rules
Reporting

What does it take to build an App?
Native Platform Functionality
Data Components
Custom Objects
Security
Triggers
Work Flows
UI Components
Tabs
Page Lay-outs
Custom Views
Reports & Dash Boards
S-Controls
Visual Force
Extending the Platform
Apex Programming Language
Web Services
Force.com Email Services

Force.com Native Functionality
Native Functionality – Stuff that requires zero coding and can be done through easy point and click tools provided by the platform.
Data Components
Think of these as Db Tables
Platform allows you to define custom Objects through point-n-click tools
Once the Custom Object is defined, there could be many instances of this Objects (just like rows of a database table)
One can define various validation rules on the data easily, which the platform enforces and provides meaningful errors to the users if breached.
Primary & Foreign Key kind of relationships can be easily established without having to know these concepts.
UI Components
One can easily add a “Tab” which can show a list of instances of a Custom objects
Platform creates a *customizable* Details Page that shows details of an instance of a Custom Object (email page shown earlier)
These UI pages allow adding Create, Edit, Delete Buttons for an instance (Custom Buttons can also be added)
One can write an S-Control that is a locally running independent HTML piece in a page to do custom action.
Platform automatically
tracks changes made to selected fields
provides customizable role-based security up-to field level which are strictly imposed.
Workflows can be defined that can be triggered by user activity or according to a schedule.
ALL THE ABOVE IS ACHIEVED WITH ZERO CODING EFFORT

Programming Force.com
Apex Programming Language
Hosted Scripting Language
Java like Syntax
Extremely Easy Database Operations through SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language)
Web Services
Writing a Web Service is as easy as marking a method with “webservice” qualifier.
Allows exposing operations that can be invoked through standard Web Services Client
Also Provides simpler Java Script Library that simplifies invocation through HTML pages (S-Controls)
Visual Force
Tag Based Mark-up Language that allows creating Custom UI Pages
Allows Pages to be built dynamically at the server side
Email Services
Invoke an Apex Callback Method on getting a new email

DB Apex Triggers Apex WS & Global Classes Salesforce UI Pages (Visual Force) Email Services 3 rd Party App Server S-Control WS Emails JS WS API

Thanks Guneet Sahai [email_address]

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Building On Demand Apps On Force.com

by guneetsahai on May 20, 2008

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