INTEGRATION



The integration APIs provide access to your Force.com data and logic. The core set of APIs include the Force.com SOAP and REST-based APIs, the Bulk API, and the Metadata API. You can call these APIs from a wide variety of client-side languages - and toolkits are also available to ease the integration.

 The platform also supports several APIs, including the Force.com SOAP and REST APIs, providing the basis for integration with other languages such as Java, .NET, Ruby, Objective-C and PHP.
The following sections examine the more fundamental integration building blocks:
  • Creating and exposing web services using the Apex programming language
  • Invoking external web services from Apex
  • Outbound messaging for invoking external web services when data changes
  • HTTP and REST integration
  • Email integration for inbound and outbound messaging
  • The Force.com SOAP APIs and associated toolkits, such as the Mobile SDK, AJAX Toolkit, Java, .NET, PHP and Adobe Flex integrations.
  • Syndication feeds via Force.com Sites

SOAP API

Use SOAP API to create, retrieve, update or delete records, such as accounts, leads, and custom objects. With more than 20 different calls, SOAP API also allows you to maintain passwords, perform searches, and much more. Use SOAP API in any language that supports Web services.


REST API

REST API provides a powerful, convenient, and simple REST-based Web services interface for interacting with Salesforce. Its advantages include ease of integration and development, and it’s an excellent choice of technology for use with mobile applications and Web projects. However, if you have a large number of records to process, you may wish to use Bulk API, which is based on REST principles and optimized for large sets of data.

Bulk API

Bulk API is based on REST principles and is optimized for loading or deleting large sets of data. You can use it to query, insert, update, upsert, or delete a large number of records asynchronously by submitting batches which are processed in the background by Salesforce.
SOAP API, in contrast, is optimized for real-time client applications that update small numbers of records at a time. Although SOAP API can also be used for processing large numbers of records, when the data sets contain hundreds of thousands of records, it becomes less practical. Bulk API is designed to make it simple to process data from a few thousand to millions of records.

Metadata API

Use Metadata API to retrieve, deploy, create, update, or delete customizations for your organization. The most common use is to migrate changes from a sandbox or testing organization to your production environment. Metadata API is intended for managing customizations and for building tools that can manage the metadata model, not the data itself.
The easiest way to access the functionality in Metadata API is to use the Force.com IDE or Force.com Migration Tool. These tools are built on top of Metadata API and use the standard Eclipse and Ant tools respectively to simplify the task of working with Metadata API. Built on the Eclipse platform, the Force.com IDE provides a comfortable environment for programmers familiar with integrated development environments, allowing you to code, compile, test, and deploy all from within the IDE itself. The Force.com Migration Tool is ideal if you want to use a script or a command-line utility for moving metadata between a local directory and a Salesforce organization.


WSDL


Salesforce.com recommends that your new client applications use the most recent version of the Force.com WSDL file to fully exploit the benefits of richer features and greater efficiency.You can navigate to the most recent WSDL for your organization by clicking Your Name | Setup | Develop | API. When a new version is released, use the following steps in Quick Start to update your WSDL:


"Salesforce's WSDL allows you to easily integrate salesforce.com with your applications, and to build new applications that work with salesforce.com. To get started, download a WSDL file to a place accessible to your development environment."
There are two Force.com Web services for which you can obtain WSDL files for API access:
  • Force.com Enterprise WSDL—This API is for most enterprise users who are developing client applications for their organization. The enterprise WSDL file is a strongly typed representation of your organization’s data. It provides information about your schema, data types, and fields to your development environment, allowing for a tighter integration between it and the Force.com Web service. This WSDL changes if custom fields or custom objects are added to, renamed, or removed from, your organization’s Salesforceconfiguration. If you are downloading an enterprise WSDL and you have managed packages installed in your organization, you need to take an extra step to select the version of each installed package to include in the generated WSDL.
Note the following when generating the enterprise WSDL:
  • If new custom fields or objects are added to, renamed, or removed from your organization’s information, you need to regenerate the WSDL file in order to access them.
  • The generated WSDL contains the objects and fields in your organization, including those available in the selected versions of each installed package. If a field or object is added in a later package version, you must generate the enterprise WSDL with that package version to work with the object or field in your API integration.
  • Force.com Partner WSDL—This API is for salesforce.com partners who are developing client applications for multiple organizations. As a loosely-typed representation of theSalesforce object model, the partner WSDL can be used to access data within any organization.







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