Salesforce Web Services

What is Salesforce

Salesforce is a software company in the cloud that provides customer relationship management services. It helps businesses to hunt for more prospects, close deals, and deliver exceptional service to their clients. Salesforce helps various teams of the organisation to work together. Salesforce helps to improve communication between the teams, which indirectly improves productivity and drives business growth. It is a  platform that helps you to explore data insights. To visualise the data the user can also set up dashboards. Another benefit of using salesforce is that automation of personalised outreach is possible. Thus salesforce assists organisations to improve their sales team or customer outreach efforts.

The salesforce architecture consists of the following:

• API services
• Multi Tenant
• Metadata

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What is a Web Service Salesforce

Webservice is a standard medium to promulgate communication between the server application of the web that is spread across the world. It provides a common platform for various applications that are built using different programming languages for communicating with each other.  The communication takes place using various methods such as HTTP callout, XML, & SOAP intending to exchange data. Web Services thereby is a code or functionality that helps us to do the integration. SOAP web services and RESTful web services are the two main types of web services. The cost of implementation is very low in the web service salesforce.

How does the Salesforce Webservice work

Open standards such as WSDL, SOAP, XML, and HTML are used by web services to enable communication among different applications. Below mentioned open standards are used in the working of a web service

• To tag, the data XML is used
• To transfer the message SOAP is used
• To describe the service availability WSDL is used

A Java-based web service via Solaris can be built by a user which is accessible from the program of visual basics that runs on windows. You can also build a new web service using c# on windows which can be invoked from the web application based on the JavaServer page and run on Linux.

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For instance: Let us consider an example of an order processing and account management system. The person in accounts uses a client application that is built with JSP or visual basics to create accounts that are new and also enter new orders from customers. Java has the processing logic and resides on a Solaris machine, it also interacts to store information with the database. 

The following steps need to be performed:

1. The account information of the client about registration is bundled into a SOAP message.
2. The SOAP message is then sent to the web service simultaneously in the HTTP post request body.
3. The web service now decodes the request of SOAP and converts it into the language ( command) that the application understands.
4. The application then processes the required information and then creates a new account number for the same customer.
5. The web service then packages the response in another SOAP message in response to its HTTP request which is sent back to the client.
6. Finally, the client program decodes the SOAP message to obtain the details of the account which is registered.

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Types of Web Services

Soap web service

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SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. It uses messaging protocol instructions to exchange structured information. WSDL(web service description language) file defines the parameters to access all the data via API. This service can only be supported by Extensible Markup Language (XML).  SOAP API can easily access both salesforce data and business logic. It can handle data volumes that are medium. SOAP APIs are designed for creating, recovering, updating, and deleting the records such as passwords, custom objects, and leads. They can produce more than twenty kinds of calls that are different which will help API developers in maintaining the accounts and do accurate research. SOAP API can be used with any language that supports web services.

REST API

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REST (Representational state transfer) is a software architecture that is used by distributed hypermedia systems. It has a lightweight request and an interactive framework.  REST web service is very easy and simple to use since it is a powerful web service that is based on restful principles. The functionality is exposed via HTTP methods and REST resources. REST API supports both XML and JSON. It also supports applications that are mobile and web based. Client server architecture, caching, statelessness, layered system, uniform interface, and code on demand, are the principles of REST. A REST API is independent of the language that is used and also the type of platform. It adapts on its own the type of platform or the syntax that is used. This provides the user the freedom of changing and even testing new environments that are in development. The only disadvantage of using the REST API is it lacks standardisation which leads to misunderstandings.  

Components of  Salesforce Web Services

Following are the component of a web services

UDDI: Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) is an XML- based standard for publishing, finding, and also describing web services. Following are its features:

• UDDI refers to a specification that is used for the registry that is distributed by a web service.
• UDDI has an open framework and is an independent platform.
• The communication can be done either via CORBA, Java RMI protocol, or SOAP
• To describe the interfaces to the web services UDDI uses WSDL
• Along with SOAP and WSDL, UDDI is also considered one of the foundation standards of web services.
• UDDI enables businesses to find each other via open industry initiatives. It also helps them define how to interact on the internet.

WSDL: WSDL(Web services description language) is also an XML-based language that describes web services and how they can be accessed. Following are its features:

• IBM and Microsoft jointly  developed the concept of WSDL
• WSDL is used to exchange information in distributed and decentralised environments.
• It is a standard format to describe a web service.
• It is also the language which is used by UDDI
• It is used to describe how the user can interface with the XML- based services.
• Though it is spelled as WSDL it can be pronounced as Wiz Dull.

XML- RPC: It is a simple XML protocol that is used for exchanging all the information between the computers. Following are its features:

• XML- RPC is an independent platform
• With the help of XML-RPC, the java client can speak with a perl server with the help of an HTTP response.
• It permits various applications to communicate
• The body of HTTP responses has all the XML responses embedded.

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Conclusion

Hope you have now understood the concept of web services in salesforce. Remember the following point while using the Salesforce Webservice:

• The incoming data needs to be validated
• Write the helper methods for example get an account on classes
• The data logic needs to be put into utility classes for using it again and also to decrease the overall complexity of the code

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