Salesforce Anti-Patterns (eBook)

Build resilient Salesforce solutions using expert advice to create robust and efficient programs

Lars Malmqvist (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
252 Seiten
Packt Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-83546-211-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Prevent common pitfalls in your Salesforce solutions by optimizing your Salesforce architecture with the help of this updated guideKey FeaturesBuild a solid foundation in Salesforce architecture to troubleshoot and enhance your implementationsDevelop expertise in designing and implementing complex Salesforce architecturesExplore common mistakes in Salesforce anti-patterns and their impact on program performancePurchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBookBook DescriptionWhile Salesforce is a powerful platform, it is prone to common pitfalls that can result in suboptimal performance, increased costs, and reduced user satisfaction. Known as anti-patterns, these problems can arise from design flaws, poor implementation choices, or a lack of understanding of best practices. Written by a seasoned Salesforce professional and 33-time certified Salesforce Certified Technical Architect, this revised edition will teach you how to identify and avoid common issues, optimize your Salesforce architecture, and ensure successful implementation. This second edition is updated with a comprehensive exploration of Salesforce, along with the addition of the most common Salesforce anti-patterns, providing in-depth analysis and practical solutions. These key learnings will further refine your skills to help you build more robust, scalable, and efficient Salesforce architectures. The chapters offer an expanded coverage of emerging technology trends such as AI and DevOps, updated examples, and additional case studies to ensure that you have the latest information and insights. By the end of this book, you ll have gained the confidence and expertise needed to design and implement effective Salesforce solutions. What you will learnDiscover common architectural mistakes and learn how anti-patterns can improve your architectural skillsFind out how to design Salesforce data models the right waySet up data governance to prevent common issuesIdentify common data architecture issues and discover innovative ways to address themExplore common errors made in deployment setups, test strategy, and architecture governanceMaster the art of leveraging AI in integration architecturesWho this book is forThis book is for Salesforce architects, aspiring architects, developers, consultants, and decision makers who want to start making the right architectural choices or prepare for their journey to CTA. This book is not code-centric, so you will benefit from both functional and technical experience, but a basic level of platform understanding is required.]]>

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Why Do We Need to Understand Salesforce Anti-Patterns?

Salesforce anti-patterns tell us about the kinds of systematic mistakes that make their way into many Salesforce projects – mistakes that can even seem like a good idea at the time of implementation but end up having serious drawbacks in the long run. We’ll learn about the most common types of mistakes and how to think about them throughout this book. However, to do so, we must understand what anti-patterns are and how understanding them can help us architect and design better systems.

In consequence, this chapter will start by explaining what anti-patterns are by going through several different definitions and ways of looking at them. Then, you’ll learn how they can help you deepen your understanding of architecture by knowing how these common mistakes are made and how they can seem like a good idea at the time. We’ll finish this chapter by explaining what will be covered in this book and how you can approach the content provided.

In this second edition, we’ve expanded our exploration of Salesforce anti-patterns to include new patterns and insights that address the latest trends and developments in the Salesforce ecosystem. These additions are based on feedback from readers of the first edition and our ongoing research into the evolving landscape of Salesforce architecture. Notably, we’ve included new patterns related to AI and DevOps practices, such as “AI architecture is like normal architecture” and “Let’s add AI to it,” as well as updates to existing patterns to reflect the current best practices.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Understanding anti-patterns
• Where do anti-patterns come from?
• How can anti-patterns deepen your architectural skills?
• Learning about anti-patterns from an example

Free Benefits with Your Book

Your purchase includes a free PDF copy of this book along with other exclusive benefits. Check the Free Benefits with Your Book section in the Preface to unlock them instantly and maximize your learning experience.

Understanding anti-patterns

Most developers and architects will be familiar with the concept of a pattern – a good solution to a recurring problem within an architectural domain described in a formalized and reusable way. Some classic examples are as follows:

• Singleton: A software design pattern that limits the number of instances of a given type to 1
• Fire-and-forget: An asynchronous integration pattern that sends off a message from a computational context and proceeds without waiting for a response
• Model-View-Controller (MVC): An architectural pattern that divides an application into three tiers with specifically defined responsibilities:
  1. First, a model maintains the state of the application and is responsible for any changes to data.
  2. Second, a view shows a particular representation of that model to an end user via some interface.
  3. Third, a controller implements the business logic that responds to events in the user interface or changes in the model and does the necessary mediation between the view and the model.

  This pattern is shown in the following diagram:

Figure 1.1 – MVC pattern diagram

Patterns such as these have been defined at many levels of abstraction and for many different platforms.

References

Take a look look at the following resources to get a good introduction to the various patterns that you can apply from a Salesforce perspective:

The integration patterns guide lists all the main patterns you should use when designing Salesforce integrations: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.integration_patterns_and_practices.meta/integration_patterns_and_practices/integ_pat_intro_overview.htm. In a Salesforce world, this may be the most commonly referenced set of patterns as they’re ubiquitous for integration design.

The book Apex Design Patterns from Packt, by Anshul Verma and Jitendra Zaa, provides patterns at the software design level and the concrete code level for the Apex language.

The Salesforce Architects site, while new, contains a range of patterns across domains, from code-level specifics to reference architectures and solution kits to good patterns for selecting governance: https://architect.salesforce.com/design/#design-patterns.

The point is that we have lots of good patterns to choose from on the Salesforce platform, many of which are provided by Salesforce themselves, though others are provided by the wider community. Many patterns that apply to other platforms are also relevant to us and we learn much by studying them.

But this is a book about anti-patterns, not patterns. So, why am I starting with a discussion about patterns? It turns out that the two are nearly inseparable and originate in the same tradition. So, understanding anti-patterns begins with understanding what a pattern is. One common form of anti-pattern is a design pattern that has been misapplied. We’ll explore this in the next section.

From pattern to anti-pattern

The design pattern movement in software architecture originates from the work of Christopher Alexander, an architect whose job was to design buildings rather than systems. In his work The Timeless Way of Building, he introduced a pattern template for physical architecture that consisted of a name, a problem statement, and a solution in a standardized format.

The rhetorical structure provided by the Alexandrian template was rapidly adopted by architects of a different kind – the ones that build software. They recognized the power of a standardized way to describe problem-solution sets for communicating good practice. With the publication of the classic Gang of Four book, Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, the use of patterns became mainstream within software development and remains so to this day.

The research on patterns inspired an incipient community of practitioners and researchers in software engineering to think about failure modes of software systems analogously to how design patterns were being used. This happened over an extended period, and it isn’t possible to point to anyone in the anti-patterns movement who can be seen as the genuinely foundational figure.

However, many research papers on this topic start with the definition given by Andrew Koening in Journal of Object-Oriented Programming in 1995. This definition says that an anti-pattern is very similar to a pattern and can be confused for one. However, using it doesn’t lead to a solution; instead, it has negative consequences.

This definition captures much of the essence and can be combined with the following thoughts from Jim Coplien, another early pioneer. He thought that good patterns in and of themselves weren’t sufficient to define a successful system. You also have to be able to show that anti-patterns are absent.

So, in a nutshell, an anti-pattern is a pattern that occurs in unsuccessful software systems or projects that can look superficially like a good solution but, in practice, gets you into trouble. The following are some common anti-patterns that have been around for ages and are still relevant:

• Stovepipe: A system or module that’s effectively impossible to change because of how its interfaces are designed. See the following diagram for an illustration:

Figure 1.2 – The Stovepipe anti-pattern

• Blob: A design where a single class effectively encapsulates all the business logic and functionality, leading to major maintenance headaches.
• Intensive coupling: A design that uses an excessively large number of methods from another class or module in implementing a feature, leading to a deep dependency that’s hard to understand or change.

We’ll dig into all these anti-patterns from a Salesforce perspective in later chapters, underscoring the unfortunate fact that Salesforce, while a great platform, is still a software system that’s prone to the kind of mistakes that have plagued software systems for decades. If this weren’t the case, then there’d be no need for this book – or Salesforce architects, for that matter.

In addition to having a foundational understanding of anti-patterns, it’s crucial to recognize how these patterns align with the latest trends in the Salesforce ecosystem. With the growing interest in AI and DevOps, new anti-patterns have emerged that specifically address challenges in these areas. For instance, the “Let’s add AI to it” pattern warns against the temptation to incorporate AI into solutions without a clear, justified...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.1.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik
• ISBN-10: 1-83546-211-1 / 1835462111
• ISBN-13: 978-1-83546-211-9 / 9781835462119