Many experts will say that cloud computing is the future of software and that application development will certainly become far much easier as a result. We agree with this assessment and begin our exploration of cloud development with the Force.com platform provided by Salesforce.com. From our vantage point, developing applications using Salesforce has these clear advantages:
Faster, more active development – Force.com is fast because it needs minimal coding. A developer can assemble his apps in building-block fashion utilizing visual tools, existing data structures, and a library of elements.
Easier to obtain started – Standard ASP.NET or JAVA applications require software setup and maintenance. With cloud computing, designers require only an Internet connection to create product, due to the fact that the source code and put together courses are stored directly on the cloud.
Simpler and less expensive to keep – Running on-premise applications has actually constantly been complicated, costly, and slow. Each application hosted by a venture requires the purchase and upkeep of the requisite hardware, operating systems, databases, middleware, Web servers, and other associated software. With Salesforce.com, this whole stack is offered you without the hassle of upkeep.
Conceived with the future of the web in mind – Force.com includes an enterprise-wide social media network framework called Chatter with built in parts like feeds, profiles, discussions, updates, and file sharing. You can also build native mobile apps powered by a safe cloud database, with powerful APIs or develop mobile-optimized browser apps.
Developed for change – Unavoidably, changing company requirements require modifications be made to enterprise applications. This need for modifications usually kicks off another lengthy development, screening, and re-deployment cycle. The Salesforce platform fills out all these spaces and allows firms to benefit from faster re-deployment. Companies have actually embraced cloud options like Salesforce.com in big part because of their ease of use, scalability, dependability, and on-going upgrades.
Don’t fret over security – Force.com provides incredibly effective and flexible security architecture. It showcases a multi-layered security method to safeguard crucial information from not only external sources, however also from wrongful internal access.
Seamlessly integrate with other innovations – Force.com can be quickly integrated with other leading technologies like ASP.NET or C# by exposing a custom function as a web service. Force.com pages are hosted by the Force.com platform, which supplies services such as security and memory management to one’s application.
Quick access to Salesforce’s existing 82,400 company user base (which has money to spend) through the AppExchange (just a $300 listing charge).
Piggy back off Salesforce’s effective existing functionality, consisting of:
- User management and authentication
- Management user interface
- Reporting and analytics
- Dynamic API
- Toolkits and integrations for other languages and platforms
PaaS providing allows you not to fret about server upkeep or architecture
Security, both because of code review and because of high degree of control on the platform
Java-like syntax speeds finding out curve for new designers
Native “Visualforce” elements permit fast and simple information output
Active community. Great deals of information out there and active participation from Salesforce staff
Object metadata can be leveraged for effective performance
Actively under development (Big things underway with VMForce).
Disadvantages
1 – PINNACLE is not a fully showcased language
- Lots of things you may want were there aren’t.
- You will certainly need to port them yourself or make outgoing webservice calls.
2 – Difficult to understand if you will really make money.
- Hard to impossible to find income numbers for the AppExchange.
- Per-user licensing creates a quite linear margin on license fees (rather than potentially exponential on a metered system like GAE or EC2).
- Data based prices makes it pricy for folks with great deals of data.
3 – Debugging can be extremely slow:
- No real debugger.
- Places where you do not even have a debug log (not enabled, in a handled package, reached the limit, or strange mistakes that do not leave an entry).
- Unfixed bugs or quirks on the platform that you would not anticipate (i.e. undocumented distinctions between commandLink and commandButton).
4 – Ideaexchange and other reporting devices tend to be admin focused.
and tailored to brand-new features, not repairs or much better developer devices.
5 – Guv limitations in some cases make sense, however at other times they can be really hard and prevent exactly what would be finest practice. Extremely simple to obtain in a place where you are caught by a governor limit and very hard to understand ahead of time whether or not any provided practice you will take there. These are two times as a problem when it concerns test protection.
6 – Developer tools remain to be somewhat lacking (although the Force.com IDE runs in Eclipse you cannot utilize many of the Java focused extensions and develop time is sluggish).
