This chapter will introduce you to the Force.com platform. We will understand the life cycle of an application build using Force.com. We will define a multi-tenant architecture and understand how it will impact the data of organizations stored on the cloud. And finally, we will build our first application on Force.com.
We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- The multi-tenant architecture of Force.com
- Understanding the Force.com platform
- Application development on the Force.com platform
- Discussing the maintenance and releases schedule by Salesforce.com
- Types of Force.com applications
- Discussing when to use point-and-click customization and when to use code
- Discussing Salesforce.com IDs
- Developer resources
So, let's get started and step into the cloud.
Force.com is a cloud computing platform used to build enterprise applications. The end user does not have to worry about networks, hardware, software licenses, or any other things. The data saved is completely secure in the cloud.
The following features of Force.com make it a 100 percent cloud-based system:
- The multi-tenant architecture: The multi-tenant architecture is a way of serving multiple clients on the single software instance. Each client gets their own full version of the software configuration and data. They cannot utilize the other instance resources. The software is virtually partitioned into different instances. The basic structure of the multi-tenant architecture is shown in the following figure:
Just like how tenants in a single building share the resources of electricity and water, in the multi-tenant system tenants share common resources and databases.
In a multi-tenant system, such as Salesforce.com, different organizations use the same shared database system that is separated by a secure virtual partition. Special programs keep the data separated and make sure that no single organization monopolizes the resources.
- Automatic upgrades: In a cloud computing system, all the new updates are automatically released to its subscribers. Any developments or customizations made during the previous version are automatically updated to the latest version without any manual modification to the code. This results in all instances of Salesforce staying up to date and on the same version.
- Subscription model: Force.com is distributed under the subscription model. The user can purchase a few licenses and build the system. After the system is up and successful, further user licenses can be purchased from Salesforce. This model ensures that there are no large startup fees and we pay as we go, which adds fixed, predictable costs in the future.
The subscription model can be visualized like the electricity distribution system. We pay for whatever electricity we use and not the complete generator and the infrastructure.
- Scalability: The multi-tenant kernel is already tested and runs for many users simultaneously. If the organization is growing, there is always room for scaling the application with new users without worrying about load balancing and data limitation. Force.com provides data storage on a per-user basis, which means that the data storage increases with the number of users added to the organization.
- Upgrades and maintenance: Force.com releases three updated versions every year. The new releases consist of feature updates to Salesforce.com and the Force.com platform with selected top ideas from IdeaExchange. IdeaExchange is the community of Salesforce users where the users submit ideas and the community votes for them. The most popular ideas are considered by Salesforce in their next release.
All instances hosted on the servers are upgraded with no additional cost. The Salesforce maintenance outage during a major release is only 5 minutes.
The sandboxes are upgraded early so there can be testing for compatibility with the new release. The new releases are backward-compatible with previous releases, thus the old code will work with new versions. The upgrades are taken care of by Force.com and the end user gets the latest-version running application.