Practical Salesforce Architecture

Chapter 3. Platform Data Concepts

As architects, we need to understand the shape of data models and the ways to interact with them. Successful enterprise systems work by maximizing efficiencies and minimizing resistance. Resistance can be defined as the opposite of ease: anything that requires extra effort or resources to maintain creates resistance.

Each platform does different things in different ways. When creating solutions with different platforms, it’s important to understand how easily their data models can be shared or work together. For example, Salesforce can process updates to single data records quickly and easily. If you need to work with other systems that can also perform fast and easy single data record updates, those systems can be expected to work together with little resistance.

On the other hand, relative to other systems, Salesforce is not as fast at updates that involve large numbers of data records. If you want to integrate with a system that can natively handle large record transfers or updates much faster than Salesforce, you have resistance. You might need to add an intermediary system, like a high-performance data store. Alternatively, you could build a custom inbound or outbound processing component to manage the extra time required to complete the operation. This additional infrastructure or code is the resistance. Another example is dealing with complex or deep hierarchies. Salesforce has only limited support for displaying relationships that require ...