Salesforce Web Services

Salesforce technology is one of the leading cloud technologies in the IT industry. The future prospects of salesforce technology are very bright and high. It provides cloud computing applications to all the stages of industries and businesses.

Salesforce is a software company based on cloud technology that offers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Services. CRM is a strategy or a technique used by businesses to maintain healthy relationships with customers or potential customers.

Salesforce Web Services is a prebuilt set of applications designed for businesses and modified according to one's needs and requirements. It helps marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams work as one team from any part of the world. It started as a software-as-a-service CRM company and now it provides various solutions and a platform for users and developers to develop and distribute customized software.

Table of Content - Salesforce Web Services

Core Architecture of Salesforce Web Services What Exactly is a Web Service? Type of Web Service What is REST API? What is SOAP API? Why Web Service Salesforce?

Core Architecture of Salesforce

The architecture of the salesforce includes

• Multi-Tenant
• Metadata and
• API Services.

Here is a brief explanation of the architecture

Do you want to get certified and build your career in Salesforce? Then enroll in "Online Salesforce Certification" this course will help you to achieve excellence in this domain.

Multi-Tenant

In this layer, a typical application is shared by multiple clients. But each client accessing the server will have his working environment which is isolated from the other working clients. With this, a developer can develop a code and share it on the cloud where multiple users can easily access it. As the same server and application are accessed by multiple users, it is very cost-effective. As the resources are shared, the cost of setting those resources and the cost of maintenance of those resources are also shared. This architecture provides high security.

Metadata

In Metadata, Metadata (data about the data) is also stored along with the common data. Each client will have their own Metadata. Here one client using the same database cannot access the other client's data as they are unaware of each other's metadata who also uses the same database. It keeps the user data secure by sharing a common database.

API Services 

API stands for Application Program Interface. This layer facilitates connectivity and communication between different devices and applications. Sometimes developer needs more functionality for the application to make the changes. APIs are used to make modifications in salesforce applications and also to call APIs to retrieve data from other systems. Salesforce offers multiple API such as Bulk API, Metadata API, and many more.

Also, Read this Salesforce Tutorials for Beginners which will help you to achieve a dream career.

Web Services

Web service is a way to call a method of one application into a method of a different application. For this, we have to integrate application one and application 2. this can either be a one-way or two-way integration. If it is one-way integration that is the calling method of the second application into 1st application, it may or may not require middleware. When the middleware is involved, the procedure is first applied to the middleware and then the middleware carries the step forward. The applications can be written in any language and may or may not be stored on the same server.

What Exactly is a Web Service?

Web services are a way of communicating between two applications that are written in interoperable languages and through various methods. The methods could be SOAP, REST, HTTP callout, or future callout. So, in Salesforce integration is a method in which salesforce is one application and needs to be integrated with another application.

Depending on the requirement, data from the salesforce is called outside of the application, or data from another application is called inside the salesforce application.

Type of Web Service

We use two types of web services.

• SOAP web services.
• RESTful web services.

API Name	Protocol
REST API	REST
SOAP API	SOAP (WSDL)
Chatter REST API	REST
Analytics REST API	REST
Bulk API	REST
Metadata API	SOAP (WSDL)
Streaming API	Bayeux
Apex REST API	REST
Apex SOAP API	SOAP (WSDL)
Tooling API	Build custom development tools for Salesforce platform applications

What is REST API?

• The software architecture style used by distributed hypermedia systems is Representational State Transfer (REST).
• REST API has an interactive framework and a lightweight request.
• It is a powerful web service based on RESTful principles and is simple and easy to use.
• Functionality is exposed through REST resources and HTTP methods.
• Search or query-related data is required to retrieve object metadata and access information
• Both XML and JSON are supported by REST API.
• Supports Mobile as well as Web apps.
• The reference of Rest resource id done using URI, to abstract information, and access is given using HTTP methods.

What is SOAP API?

• Messaging protocol specifications are used by Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to exchange structured information.
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file is used to define the parameters for accessing data through the API.
• This service supports only XML (EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE).
• It is one of the best server-to-server integrations as in this API, WSDL files are used as a formal contract between the API and consumer.
• It has easy access to business logic and Salesforce data.
• Only medium data volumes can be handled by SOAP API.

Why Web Service Salesforce?

• It is used for better exposure of the functionality of the existing code on the network.
• It is well known for its interoperability as it allows various applications on a database to call each other and share data and services among themselves.
• It uses a well-defined standard protocol stack for communication between the layers.
• Implementation costs of the web services is comparably very low.