2021-02-14 Sunday - Book Review - Salesforce Architect's Handbook, from Apress®

Your First, Best, Choice - for Quickly Understanding Salesforce From An Architect's Perspective.

image source: Amazon.com

 Salesforce Architect’s Handbook, A Comprehensive End-to-End Solutions Guide
Authors: Dipanker Jyoti, James A. Hutcherson

 

Available on Amazon

• Kindle: 
•  https://www.amazon.com/Salesforce-Architects-Handbook-End-End-ebook/dp/B08TLJYTSZ/

• Paperback: 
• https://www.amazon.com/Salesforce-Architects-Handbook-End-End/dp/1484266307/

Available from Apress:

• https://www.apress.com/us/book/9781484266304
  

 

My Review

Full Disclosure: At my request, Susan McDermott, Executive Editor with Apress®, graciously provided me with a copy of this book to review.

As a knowledge foundation stone, this book is an excellent start for any developer, manager, or architect to begin their Salesforce learning journey.

The first thing you should know about my reaction to reading this book: Respect for the obvious effort that went into organizing the content, and the brevity and clarity of the writing.

There is a particular word that came to mind as I slowly worked my way through the chapters of this book. It is a word I reserve for writing that is of an exceptionally high quality. That word is “crisp”.  This is praise that I do not give lightly, or frequently.

The second word that comes to mind, when reviewing this book: Holistic.

This is not a book on Salesforce programming – nor on how to administer it. There are plenty of books available on those topics. No, this book – as its title states – has a focus – and it delivers.

This book is about understanding Salesforce capabilities, in their context, to enable an architect to design solutions. And it does that very well.

Salesforce is such a large topic to try to cover in a single book – of any reasonable length (this one is 383 pages, including the index). It would be easy for less talented authors to fill the pages with information that would drown the user. But not so in this book. There were keen eyes involved in crafting this book – a balance and focus is held – that guides the reader through that which is essential for an architect’s concerns.

Chapters:

1. Salesforce Architecture
2. The Art of Artifacts
3. Salesforce Application Architecture
4. Salesforce Data Architecture
5. Salesforce Security Architecture
6. Salesforce Integration Architecture
7. Salesforce Identity Access Management Architecture
8. Salesforce Mobile Architecture
9. Salesforce Development and Deployment Lifecycle
10. Appendix A: Salesforce Authorization Flows 
11. Appendix B: Salesforce Integration Patterns 
12. Appendix C: Salesforce Sample Artifacts

As a consultant – frequently engaged by organizations that have chosen the Salesforce platform as a key component in their Enterprise Architecture – I have been keeping my eye out for a good book to recommend to those that I mentor. This book will be at the top of my list to suggest, going forward.

This book is an excellent overview and introduction to Salesforce for architects – whether Enterprise Architects, Solution Architect, System Architects, Domain Architects, Integration Architect, Security Architects, or Managers – who lead engineering teams.

What I particularly liked:

• Examples used for discussion and elaboration of concepts are meaningful, clear, concise.
• The diagrams in the book are of an excellent quality.
• The authors provide a balanced view – and consider the trade-offs, advantages, and disadvantages of different approaches to solution development.
• Salesforce architecture concepts are introduced, and examples are used to discuss and  reinforce the reader’s understanding of the concept.
• The why is explained, not just the what.
• FUSIAOLA Analysis – and the example artifacts provided in the Appendix C.
• Clarifying the distinction between shared and external objects – and the limitations of the latter.
• Highlighting the thresholds at which data storage can impact performance.
• The discussion on the Salesforce licensing model – and license types.
• There are many good, general purpose, architecture practices – that elevate the value of the book beyond just focusing on Salesforce.
• Chapter 4’s discussion on data architecture performance considerations
• Chapter 7’s Identity Access Management discussion
• Chapter 8’s discussion on the limitations of the new Salesforce App (Mobile) - which replaced  Salesforce1, and the mobile web experience, and the comparison between Salesforce App and Salesforce Mobile SDK capabilities.
• Chapter 9’s coverage of SDLC and DevOps topics. Figure 9-2, on page-296  is a great metaphor. The discussion of the Salesforce Delivery Team roles and responsibility is well done – and will be useful for organization’s that are just beginning their adoption of Salesforce.
• The coverage of Security Architecture concerns – including data encryption at rest, and in transit – as well as the excellent and concise coverage of Salesforce Authorization Flows in Appendix A.

Possible suggestions for inclusion in a future 2^nd Edition:

• A dedicated chapter to discuss Salesforce anti-patterns (what common mistakes are frequently seen).
• A discussion on custom API versioning strategies (options supported, limitations, capabilities).
• An expanded discussion on Salesforce support for event-driven architecture, pub/sub, messaging – and integration capabilities with other event/messaging technologies.

For any reader who urgently needs to get up-to-speed quickly - they may find Chapter 3 (or Chapters 5 and 6) to be worth the price of the book alone.

If you suddenly find yourself assigned to your very first Salesforce project – this is the first book you want to read.