According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, metadata is “data that provides information about other data.”1 The simplest way to think about Salesforce metadata is that it’s everything in your Salesforce org that’s not data records. The Salesforce metadata describes how the data records are stored, processed, and displayed. Example metadata types include custom objects, Apex classes, Visualforce pages, Lightning component bundles, and approval processes.
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Metadata components are instances of metadata types. For example, CustomObject is a metadata type, and the custom object Example_Object__c is a metadata ...
