2023-04-02 Sunday - Book Review: Salesforce Platform Enterprise Architecture, 4th Edition

 

[image credit: Packt.com]

Salesforce Platform Enterprise Architecture, 4th edition

by Andrew Fawcett (VP Product Management, Salesforce)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1804619779

[my review on Amazon]

Full Disclosure: Rohan Dobhal (DevRel Marketing Executive, Packt Publishing) invited me to review a preview copy of the book.

 My Book Review:

This book is not just focused on Enterprise Architecture. It covers concerns/considerations that are appropriate for both delivery teams and architecture roles - across an organization.

A well written book that should be owned by teams involved in designing and developing Salesforce Platform solutions (e.g., Managers, Developers, Solution Architects, Enterprise Architects, Security Architects, Integration Architects, Data Architects, AI & ML specialists).

Andrew Fawcett's book is well organized and well written.

At 600+ pages, the book does a good job at being holistic and comprehensive - covering the essential details to provide a well-rounded hands-on experience for the reader.

I particularly appreciated the coverage of the Salesforce DX, CLI, and the Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VSCode) IDE.

I also very much appreciated the author's efforts to include useful links to Salesforce documentation & resources - as well a references to useful 3rd party resources.

As a contrast with other Salesforce architecture focused books on the market - this book provides plenty of hands-on exercises for the reader to develop practical experience.

Some topics covered that will be of particular interests to architects...architecture considerations related to:

• Security
• Encryption
• Authentication/Authorization
• Data Security
• Data Architecture/Storage  
• Change Data Capture (CDC) strategies
• Deployment
• Platform APIs (REST, SOAP, GraphQL) - and API versioning
• OpenAPI v3, Swagger
• Localization
• Flow (for business process automation)
• Salesforce Limits
• Execution context, and transaction management - and platform governors
• Separation of Concerns
• Apex Commons library - that supports patterns
• Naming Conventions, Checklists & Guidelines
• Contract Driven development
• Testing (Constructor Dependency Injection, Apex Stub API, Dependency Injections, ApexMocks, UI Test Automation Model, ...)
• Citations of Martin Fowler’s Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture woven into the narrative
• Salesforce Functions SDK
• Lightning architecture - and the new LWC framework (re: UIs)
• Integration capabilities (touching on Salesforce's Mulesoft integration platform, and the new DataWeave transformation language) - as well as integrating with external services (inbound, outbound, Connected App type - leveraging OAuth, Named Credentials for outbound calls, External Objects - leveraging OData standard, extended features for integration with AWS Services)
• Pub/Sub messaging via Platform Events feature (leveraging industry standard gRPC API)
• Standard Platform APIs for integration
• Apex application APIs
• Exposing platform events
• Asynchronous processing
• Big data processing strategies (e.g., billions of records)
• Batch Apex 
• Source Control and Continuous Integration (touching on Jenkins usage - which I also recommend)
• Touching on AI with Salesforce's Einstein capabilities

Some readers might quibble with the title - since this book is not solely (or mostly) focused on Enterprise Architecture - but I appreciated the level of hands-on examples - as it deepened my knowledge and understanding.

2021-11-19 Friday - Book Review: Salesforce B2C Solution Architect's Handbook

 

(image source: Amazon.com)

Salesforce B2C Solution Architect's Handbook: Design scalable and cohesive business-to-consumer experiences with Salesforce Customer 360

https://www.amazon.com/Salesforce-Solution-Architects-business-consumer/dp/1801817030/

(Link to my Amazon review) 

Published: 2021-11-19

Pages: 458

by Mike King, Director, Global B2C Commerce at Slalom

“Mike King has worked on the most complex B2C Commerce customer implementations, including multiple brands and geographies worldwide. Mike is also a certified Salesforce instructor, teaching the B2C Technical Architect certification preparation course. In January 2019, Mike participated in the inaugural Salesforce cross-cloud academy. He has since worked with Salesforce on the B2C Solution Architect exam development team and in real-world B2C solution architecture implementations. Mike has also presented numerous times with Salesforce on the topic of B2C solution architecture, including at TrailheaDX and Dreamforce.”

Thanks to Deepak Kumar (Marketing Coordinator at Packt) - his unexpected invitation to review this book - arrived just when I urgently needed to read a book just like this, the most. I am most grateful for his gracious, and timely, invitation.

 (My LinkedIn post mentioning this review)

My Book Review, Short Summary:

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. An excellent book for anyone interested in becoming proficient as a Solution Architect in Salesforce B2C.

As the Preface mentions: “This book is primarily aimed at Salesforce technical audiences familiar with one or more of the products in the Customer 360 suite (especially B2C Commerce, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud).”

What I particularly liked:

The concise and crisp writing style.

The copious number of links to supplemental information and documentation.

The logical progression of the material, the sequencing of the chapters, and the organization of the material within the chapters.

The inclusion of the Further Reading section at the end of several chapters.

The use of a common thread to help tie things together in the mind of the reader  (page-4, “Throughout this journey, we'll be following along with Packt Gear, a fictional company that manufactures, markets, and sells outdoor supplies directly to the consumer.”)

Chapter-1 is an excellent level-setting chapter.

Chapter-2’s coverage of Limits and Allocations

Chapter-3’s coverage of Order Management, Omni-Channel Inventory, Loyalty Management, and Commerce Payments.

Chapter-4 – all of it.

Chapter-5’s holistic approach – teaching how to build a complete solution – with the “Packt Gear” scenario.

Chapter-6’s coverage of architecture deliverables.

Chapter-7’s coverage of different development life cycles – and integration architecture options. The discussion on middleware – and MuleSoft.

Chapter-9’s discussion on integrating chat bots.

 

What could be improved in the next edition:

Performance is a vital consideration when designing a solution – and it would be helpful if there was a chapter that could illustrate how different design/integration/implementation choices could result in (possibly significant?) different performance profiles.  This chapter could also cover Diagnosing and Debugging Performance Problems.

 

Table of Contents:

Section 1: Customer 360 Component Products

1 - Demystifying Salesforce, Customer 360, and Digital 360

2 - Supporting Your Customers with Service Cloud

3 - Direct-to-Consumer Selling with Commerce Cloud B2C

4 - Engaging Customers with Marketing Cloud

5 - Salesforce Ecosystem – Building a Complete Solution

Section 2: Architecture of Customer 360 Solutions

6 - Role of a Solution Architect

7 - Integration Architecture Options

8 - Creating a 360° View of the Customer

9 - Supporting Key Business Scenarios

10 - Enterprise Integration Strategies

Section 3: Salesforce-Certified B2C Solution Architect

11 - Exam Preparation Tools and Techniques

12 - Prerequisite Certifications

13 - Commerce and Integration

14 - Certification Scenarios