Development with the Force.Com Platform: Building Business Applications in the Cloud (Developer's Library) [Paperback]

This book is remarkable for three reasons.

The first reason is that this book exists at all. If you search Amazon, you'll see that there are hardly any books about Salesforce technology. If you then search for Force.com, you'll find only this book. This is because, traditionally, Salesforce and Force.com information has all been available electronically, often coming out faster than a book could be published. This is marvelous for access to information, but has a serious downside in that Developers need to look in many different places to find information about developing a Force.com solution. So, this book is beneficial in that a notably large amount of information is available in one place, and that it is available in a comforting paper-based format.

The second reason is that this book specifically focuses on Force.com, which is a relatively new development platform. The book makes no attempt to explain the traditional CRM side of the Salesforce platform; it jumps straight into Force.com, which is the custom development side of the Salesforce offering.

The third remarkable fact is that this book is written by a truly knowledgeable person on the subject. Jason Oullette is Chief Architect at Appirio, arguably the leading organisation specialising in Salesforce and Force.com technology. Jason has been personally involved in some of the biggest and most publicised rollouts of Force.com solutions. For example, he created the solution that Appirio demonstrated during the Dreamforce 2009 conference keynote presentation.

The book itself contains the complete array of technology involved in creating a Force.com solution: user interface, coding, workflow, database, integration and development tools. Each includes a sample solution for the topic discussed.

CHAPTER 1, Introducing Force.com, provides an overview of the Force.com platform and how it fits within the Salesforce suite of products.

CHAPTER 2, Database Essentials, explains how data is stored and accessed within Force.com, including the creation of custom objects and fields. It includes a comprehensive sample application that uses custom objects, formulas and data.

CHAPTER 3, Database Security, explains the multiple security models available in Force.com that can be quite confusing for new developers.

CHAPTER 4, Additional Database Features, takes a more advanced look at fields, record types (used to create different views of the same data) and a few miscellaneous topics.

CHAPTER 5, Business Logic, gets into the 'meat' of development with the Apex programming language that is native to Force.com. It covers lists, loops, governor limits, SOQL (Force.com's version of SQL), triggers, classes, tests and logs. The chapter is rich in information and could almost fill a book of its own.

CHAPTER 6, Advanced Business Logic, covers the more technical topics of SOSL (searching), DML (lower-level database calls), sharing rules (custom security) and email integration.

CHAPTER 7, User Interfaces, introduces the Visualforce platform that provides totally custom interfaces to Force.com applications. It covers the complex topics of controllers, components, actions, security and testing. Once again, this is a topic worthy of its own book. Fortunately, sample code is provided to give a worked solution of a Visualforce implementation.

CHAPTER 8, Advanced User Interfaces, continues with JavaScript interactions, components, Adobe Flex and Force.com sites (public websites). These are very advanced topics that typically cause the most angst in complex implementations.

CHAPTER 9, Integration, covers inbound and outbound communication including Salesforce-to-Salesforce and REST calls.

CHAPTER 10, Advanced Integration, throws in Web Services and the Metadata API (a means of importing/exporting the Force.com configuration).

CHAPTER 11, Additional Platform Features, covers the more mundane workflow, approvals, reporting, internationalisation and single sign-on.

The strength of this book is also its weakness, which is the fact that it covers the complete range of Force.com topics. This unfortunately means that each topic is only covered briefly, with just short samples of each topic. As an example, Chapter 5 covers Apex but only gives short samples of Inserts, Updates, Triggers and Batches. These are some of the most challenging topics in Apex yet there is unfortunately little space to delve deeply into these topics. Thus, the book has a lot of breadth, but not a lot of depth for each topic.

This book is ideal for someone new to Force.com because it provides a comprehensive overview of all Force.com topics, acting as a roadmap of knowledge and capability. However, developers will still find themselves having to consult the traditional sources of information, mostly found on Salesforce web pages and downloadable PDFs.

Don't get me wrong - this is an excellent book that legitimises Force.com development. It covers more topics than all but the best Force.com developers would know. It is already 400 pages; covering all the topics in depth would require encyclopedia-like volumes. Recognise this book as a means of gaining comprehensive insight into the capabilities of Force.com. It is great as a learning aid, but do not expect it to be a definitive reference. You will still need access to more information, but at least this book tells you what capabilities exist. I have no doubt this book will find its way onto the bookshelves of the majority of Force.com developers. Oh, and it's a darn sight easier to read this paper book on the bus than the traditional PDFs that come from Salesforce!

Before reading this book I was having a hard time understanding how to develop integrations with other databases and systems. This book not only goes through the standard custom object and field creations seen in other force.com book, it goes in depth into Apex coding, Visualforce page development, Integration setups and how to setup the Eclipse/Force.com environment successfully. Jason does an excellent job by going past the administration side of salesforce.com and places a strong focus on the complexities that force.com developers face. Salesforce.com developers have to understand three different sections: the salesforce User Interface, Apex (JAVA and SOQL) development and Visualforce pages. This book outlines all three topics. It is a must buy for any force.com developer or administrator who wants to make the jump to the force.com environment. A+

I have been working as a salesforce.com developer since 2004, before there were things like Apex and VisualForce. I recently had one my clients, Vetrazzo, featured during part of Marc Benioff's keynote at Dreamforce 2009. The Vetrazzo customization is approximately 30,000 lines of Apex code, triggers, VisualForce pages, etc. I just wish that Jason's book had existed 18 months ago when I started my project.

I purchased Jason's book via Kindle so I could read it quickly. I went through the entire book during flights from New Orleans to Dreamforce and back. Some of the material was stuff I already knew and understood, but much of the material opened new ideas and methodologies for me. Even as an experienced force.com coder, I had several "a-ha's" in the course of the reading the book.

I would definitely recommend this book for anyone developing in, or planning to develop in, salesforce.com. In both cases, reading all the way through the book will save you hours of frustration. If you just want to pick and choose your topics, the book is well organized, and it has a detailed index.

As an aside, the code samples are a bit hard to read on my Kindle (Are you listening Amazon ?). While you can adjust the displayed text size, the code examples are more like figures, and they do not adjust. Also, the light font is difficult to read. The images are actually better in the new Kindle for PC viewer. And Jason has thoughtfully provided all the code samples on a web site.

One final note, if you think you need this book, buy it immediately, read it quickly, and start coding very soon. The force.com platform is constantly improving and expanding. Often, things you cannot do today - and the book contains a lot of very useful "can't do that" warnings - you will be able to do tomorrow. Everything you learn today will be useful tomorrow, and your coding will only get better.