Salesforce Cloud Database

By Ryan Melvin

Outline Introduction Advantages of Cloud Computing Major Techniques System Architecture System Design Implementation What I learned Demo

Introduction What is Salesforce? - Salesforce is a cloud-computing infrastructure

that enables businesses and users to use software and applications over the internet

- Rather than running software and applications on local machines, everything is accessed over the internet through the Cloud-based vendor’s website (e.g., salesforce.com)

- With cloud computing, computing is delivered as a service rather than as a product.

Advantages of Cloud Computing

Software does not have to be installed and maintained

All upgrades are automatic Servers are not needed Manual Backups are not needed Software and hardware is maintained by the

Cloud-based vendor (e.g., Salesforce.com) You only pay for the resources you use

Major Techniques Transaction Support:

Transaction support is built into Salesforce, so it does not need to be implemented by the DBA; changes to the database are only committed when the the apex code in the controller and on the visualforce page have finished executing. Either all of the changes are made or no changes are made to the database.

Salesforce also provides constructs for manually creating savepoints, and manually rolling back the state of the database to its state at the time the savepoint is created

Savepoint sp = Database.setSavepoint();

Database.rollback(sp);

Security

- Salesforce provides extensive security measures

- Every user on Salesforce belongs to a certain profile (regular user, staff member, etc)

- Permissions are controlled by setting access rights for each profile (what tables can be read/modified, etc)

Permissions for Staff members

Rather than creating views to restrict access to fields, access to fields can be directly set for each profile

Field Access

System Architecture Salesforce uses the MVC(Model-View-

Controller) architecture Database tables are models Visualforce pages are the user interface and

view Apex classes are the controllers

The controller is the “middle-man” between the model (database) and view (Visualforce page)

The controller (an Apex class) receives user input submitted from the view (Visualforce page), which invokes actions on the model (database) (e.g. retrieve records)

After the controller retrieves the data from the model (database), it then communicates the data with the view, where it is displayed

System Design Three levels of users: users, staff, and

management

Users can: Buy products from the storefront website Leave feedback Request an account by filling out the registration

form (A staff member must create the account for them)

Staff can:

Process customer orders Add/edit/remove merchandise (e.g., change

quantity, etc) View all staff information except salary View all departments View customer feedback Process requests for accounts from users Act as users and purchase products from the

storefront

Management can:

Add/edit/remove staff members (e.g. hire/fire) Add/edit/remove departments View all staff information (including salary) Do everything staff and users can do

Tables for Staff management:

Staff(fields: Staff ID (PK), first name, last name, department ID (FK), age, sex, DOB, position, salary)

Department(Fields: department ID (PK), department name, department phone number)

Tables for Warehouse:

Merchandise(fields: Merchandise Name(PK), Description, Price, Total Inventory)

Invoice Statement(fields: invoice number(PK), status, invoice value)

Line Item(fields: item number (PK), Invoice Statement (PK, FK), Merchandise (FK), Unit Price, Units Sold, Value)

Tables for User Management:

PaymentInformation (fields: email(PK), first name, last name, telephone number, billing address, shipping address, credit card number, City, State, Zip Code, Country)

Feedback(fields: email(PK), comments(PK), Date)

Registrationrequest(fields: email(PK), First Name, Last Name, Community Nickname)

ImplementationExample: The model, view, and controller

for displaying the merchandise on the storefront page

The Model

The Controller

The Model

The View

What I learned How to create database tables, Apex classes

(controllers), and Visualforce pages More about the MVC model and how it is applied

on the Salesforce Cloud How to create profiles (user groups) How to set permission rights and field access on

Salesforce

What I learned (Cont’d) How to read/insert/update/delete database

records using tabs within applications Some of the Apex programming language How to build a storefront on the Salesforce cloud The benefits of using a cloud database

Demo

Creating a Table and a Field

Adding a new merchandise product

Making A Purchase on the Storefront