Summary

This chapter has introduced you to Force.com, explained how it differs from other PaaS technologies and what infrastructure it’s designed to replace, and given guidelines for its use on your projects. Here are a few thoughts to take away from this chapter:

Force.com is a PaaS uniquely designed to make business applications easy to build, maintain, and deliver. It consists of database, business logic, user interface, and integration services, all of them interoperable and interdependent, accessible through configuration or code.

The most suitable applications for implementation on Force.com operate primarily on structured data. Traditional software development roles are still relevant in the Force.com world, particularly Web and client/server developers. Data modeling takes on a new importance with the platform, as data objects are tightly integrated with the rest of the technology stack, and unit testing is mandatory.

Services Manager is the sample application built on throughout this book. It’s designed to serve companies in the professional services space, those selling projects to customers and billing them for the time of its skilled employees.