What is it?
- In short: This is a new SFDC feature to retrieve and show data in SFDC without save it in the platform.
- External Data Source: Connection to external service to retrieve data on the fly and show it in SFDC. It could be OData 2,0 or URL Rest.
- External Object: New type of Custom object which works as a wrapper to expose external data.
- Full detail in the official doc or a more lazy introduction on this video
When use it?
- When you have to integrate a service that support OData 2.0.
- When you are planning just ReadOnly integration.
- When you need that data in SFDC just to be rendered and not to be calculated (what I mean is to use it in a workflow process). This is partially true depending on your intentions when accessing this data thought APEX.
How to use it?
- Coming soon…..
Important to know
- Data is NEVER stored in SFDC
- External Object as an API Name like OBJECTNAME__x
- External Object are exposed to SOQL and Apex (Wow! Yeah!!)
- Also Views, related lists (thought External Lookup Relationship ) PageLayouts and Salesforce1
- Global Search is supported
- It is always possible to add a proxy service to translate any source to OData. Jitterbit and other services support it.
- High Data Volume checkbox bypassed most of limits.
- The authentication could be: Anonymous, Per User o Unique. Oauth 2.0 or Password.
Limitations
- Take in mind that this feature will require a special licence.
- External Objects are not available for: reporting or workflows.
- External Objects are READ-ONLY (I hope this would change soon since OData is Full CRUD supported).
- Performance could be affected by the external load. Latency would be poor in some cases.
- There are a limit of queries to be executed by hour.
- More details in the official doc
Enjoy
Martín
About Martin Borthiry
I’m a fully trained and qualified software engineer with more than 15 years of varied experience, specialized in frontend performance, web developing , cloud computing, salesforce, as well as CRM functionalties and Social Networks. Specialties: Salesforce.com Platform & Web Performance Optimization. Salesforce.com Developer and Administrator Certified. Senior Frontend, Javascript and HTML5. Heavy Ajax WebApps Mobile WebApps – Phonegap Webapps Developer (Php/Django/Python) Team Work & Managment
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