Book Review - Becoming a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect

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 (Disclaimer : I didn’t purchase my copy of this book - I was sent a copy to review by Packt Publishing)

Introduction

Salesforce describes Certified Technical architects as follows:

Salesforce Technical Architects serve as executive-level strategic advisors who focus on business transformation with unrivaled domain expertise in functional, platform and integration architecture. They communicate technical solutions and design tradeoffs effectively to business stakeholders, and provide a delivery framework that ensures quality and success.

Based on that description, it's not surprising that there's a huge amount of interest in becoming one. The path isn't straightforward though, with an awful lot of candidates falling at the last hurdle - the review board. This isn't a new development - in the 12 months after I qualified I heard about two week review board events where all 20 candidates failed.  While that's obviously bad for the candidates, it's also not great for the judges - failing people isn't a fun job, and when you have to do it repeatedly the sessions become a chore. 

One reason people fail is that they haven't got experience of presenting a solution and being judged on it. That has improved with community efforts to come up with example scenarios and run practice review boards. While this is good experience for the day of the board, it's not overly helpful in terms of preparation. And that is where this book comes in.

The Book for When You Book

This is the book you want to buy when you are about to book your review board slot.  It won't turn you into a Technical Architect - you still need the experience and learning - but it will get you ready for the board. First off, it looks at what expertise you need to become CTA - if you don't recognise yourself here and spot gaps, maybe hold off for a little while. It then takes you through the structure of the review board session and gives some useful tactics for how to approach it.

Then there are a bunch of chapters around the various areas that you need to shine at in order to pass the board, with mini-scenarios that are worked through with you. Rather than reading straight through, I'd strongly advice having a go yourself and then compare your solution with the exemplar.If you have a different view, that doesn't mean you are wrong, just make sure you can justify it and your justification stacks up - it's highly likely that you'll be quizzed about the benefits of your approach over the other possible solutions.

The book then finishes off with a couple of full mock scenarios, with example solutions and presentation artefacts and script. Again, look to make the most of this by trying it yourself under exam conditions.

Allow Enough Time

I'm already a CTA so I didn't have to take on each of the scenarios and mocks, but it still took me a couple of months to read through the book in my free time and review it. Don't expect to skim this the night before the board, or to rip through it the weekend before. Set aside enough time to work through it properly and you'll reap the benefit.

The Key Advice

The most important piece of advice in the book, which crops up multiple times, is to own your solution. You've considered all the options and have come up with the best possible solution, so be proud of it when you present, and defend it with everything you have. 

In Summary

You can boost your chances of becoming a CTA with this book. It's as simple as that. Tameem Bahri has done a great job with it.

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International Day against DRM

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If you’ve ever visited this blog before, you’ll know that I wrote a bestseller called the Visualforce Development Cookbook, and that each page of this blog contains a link to allow a smooth and easy purchase.  If you’ve been holding off adding to your cart waiting for a better price, wait no longer. For today only (6th May 2015) you can have your very own copy for just $10.

That’s right, $10. Packt Publishing are celebrating International Day against DRM by offering all e-books and videos for just $10 for one day only. Here’s the official word:

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Packt celebrates International Day Against DRM, May 6th 2015 

Packt Publishing firmly believes that you should be able to read and interact with your content when you want, where you want, and how you want – to that end they have been advocates of DRM-free content since their very first eBook was published  back in 2004. 

This year, to demonstrate their continuing support for Day Against DRM, Packt is offering all its DRM-free content at $10 for 24 hours only on May 6th – with more than 3000 eBooks and 100 Videos available across the publisher’s website www.packtpub.com, there’s plenty to discover, whatever you’re interested in.

“Our top priority at Packt has always been to meet the evolving needs of developers in the most practical way possible, while at the same time protecting the hard work of our authors. DRM-free content continues to be instrumental in making that happen, providing the flexibility and freedom that is essential for an efficient and enhanced learning experience. That’s why we’ve been DRM-free from the beginning – we’ll never put limits on the innovation of our users.” 

– Dave Maclean, CEO

Advocates of Day Against DRM are invited to spread the word and celebrate on May 6th by exploring the full range of DRM-free content at www.packtpub.com - all eBooks and Videos will be $10 for 24 hours, including the latest hot titles.

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You can find out more information at: http://bit.ly/1AEPeiW

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Return of the $5 eBonanza

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If you’ve ever visited this blog before, you’ll know that I am the author of the Visualforce Development Cookbook. There’s even a handy link to allow you to purchase on the top right of every page.  If you haven’t purchased a copy to date, there’s really no excuse now, as this year sees the return of the Packt $5 eBonanza.  

That’s right, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, you have the opportunity to buy my book in eBook format (or more than one - its the perfect Christmas gift for old and young alike). Even better, this isn’t limited to my book - in fact its every eBook and video available from Packt!

The offer runs until 6th January 2015 so there's plenty of time to make a considered selection - its the perfect opportunity to pick a new technology to learn for the coming year.

You can find out more information at:  http://bit.ly/1wHPcbd

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Book Review - Salesforce.com Customization Handbook

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(Disclaimer : I didn’t purchase my copy of this book - I was sent a copy to review by Packt Publishing)

The Salesforce.com Customization Handbook is written by a couple of people whose names will be familiar to members of the Salesforce community - Rakesh Gupta and Sagar Pareek, who previously collaborated (see what I did there) on Developing Applications with Salesforce Chatter.

The book covers a number of common areas of configuration/customisation, including user management, security settings, email administration, business process automation, data management and reports and dashboards. From the perspective of someone getting started with Salesforce, (who has maybe been dropped in at the deep end and become the de facto administrator when their company decided to buy licenses) this is a useful guide to the setup areas that should be concentrated on, including some non-obvious candidates such as truncating custom objects and mass transferring approval processes.

Where the book doesn’t live up to expectation is explaining the concepts behind what is being configured, or work through much in the way of real world examples, especially where there are multiple options.  For example, the chapter on Setting Up Deployment Processes introduces change sets, the Force.com IDE, and packages (both managed and unmanaged). What it doesn’t do is explain in what circumstances each of these would be an appropriate choice, or cover the advantages/disadvantages of one mechanism over another.  There’s also too much content that looks to be directly dropped in from the Salesforce help, or that simply repeats itself (that the Account Mailing Address field is used to store the company’s Mailing Address, for example, doesn’t really add any value).

In summary, this is a useful book for those getting started with Salesforce setup and customisation. However, with a little more focus on educating as well as informing it could have been so much more.

You can find out more about this book and purchase a copy on the Packt website.

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Book Review - Force.com Development Blueprints

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(Disclaimer: I didn’t purchase this book - I was sent an e-copy to review by Packt Publishing).

For the first time in six months, its book review time.  

 

Force.com Development Blueprints guides you through the development of number of complete applications on the Force.com (and other!) platforms:

1. A Salesforce community, including the use of Site.com to create custom branded pages
   As I’ve not done a huge amount with Site.com I was keen to dig into this chapter, so it was handy that it was the first.  One of the things that surprised me is the amount of effort required in what is purported to be a simple drag and drop tool, not only the complexity of the tool itself but also the low-level CSS tweaks required. (This might explain why Site.com didn’t really take off as intended and is now being rolled into communities as a custom page builder).
    
2. Develop an e-commerce application using Bootstrap, Ruby on Rails, Heroku and Visualforce
   I was surprised to jump straight into an application using Heroku - if you are working through the book in order it might make more sense to swap this with the third application, which is limited to the Force.com application itself.  Its a very thorough build out of the application, with a nice approach to building the basics first and then adding the slicker UI on top.
   
   
3. Build a traditional CRM solution with a custom Apex workflow feature
   Another full-featured application, taking advantage of a lot of the clicks-not-code features of the platform. I’d like to have seen this as the first application, as this is very much about employee-facing applications - the sweet spot of Force.com I’ve always thought. 
    
4. Building a custom reporting system using Visualforce
   An excellent real-world use case and example code that can be readily adapted to a number of scenarios. 
   
   
5. Build an HTML5 mobile application, using Bootstrap, Angular, Node.js and Heroku
   The complexity ramps up several notches in this chapter, which is not for the faint hearted where JavaScript is concerned. Using Node.js for JavaScript on the server, and Angular as the front end MVW framework, there’s quite a learning curve if you are new to one or more of these technologies.  This is by no means wasted learning though, as JavaScript is eating the web and demand for mobile applications is very much increasing.  
    
6. Building cloud connected applications
   Did I say application number 5 ramps up the complexity?  Chapter 6 takes it to the next level, building an application that connects to multiple external clouds via APIs and throws an Android application into the mix as well.  Set aside plenty of time for this one, as this number of external integrations means a pretty unforgiving development environment and promises plenty of opportunity to hone investigative and debugging skills.  It also bravely introduces the Android SDK, which readers of my musing on the BrightGen blog will remember was one of the more challenging aspects of the Elevate London Workshop. Once again, while this might (will!) be a challenging application to complete and understand, its very much the future of application development.  Applications built on Force.com are increasingly seen as part of the enterprise architecture and will be expected to integrate fully with the other architecture components.

As I’ve noted a couple of times above, I feel that the order of the applications could stand a little tweaking, so I would work through the applications in the following order:

3. Build a traditional CRM solution with a custom Apex workflow feature
4. Building a custom reporting system using Visualforce
1. A Salesforce community, including the use of Site.com to create custom branded pages
2. Develop an e-commerce application using Bootstrap, Ruby on Rails, Heroku and Visualforce
5. Build an HTML5 mobile application, using Bootstrap, Angular, Node.js and Heroic
6. Building cloud connected applications

This is a very well written book - each chapter flows well and the explanation of the purpose and high level overview of each application are clear and concise.  If I have one gripe its the amount of code, markup and repetitive instructions that appear (although the instructions do improve as the book goes on).  Often this comes across as filler, as the entirety of pages and controllers are presented, rather than just the key areas of functionality.  

This isn’t a book you’ll be able to skim through in a couple of evenings or a weekend. If you are coming over from the functional side of Force.com to development, you should expect the journey to take several months, returning to each chapter as your development experience increases - trying to rush through it when you aren’t that confident in the underlying technologies will likely lead to frustration when you are unable to get some of the more complex applications working.  If you are an experienced developer who is new to the Force.com platform you will go faster, but its still likely to be a number of weeks if you are making sure you understand all aspects of the applications.  It will be well worth the effort though.

You can find out more about the book, and purchase it, at:

http://www.packtpub.com/forcecom-development-blueprints/book

10 Days of 10 Dollar Ebooks

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As regular visitors to this blog are no doubt sick of being reminded, I wrote a book for Packt last year called the Visualforce Development Cookbook - if you didn’t know this, how did you miss the link at the top right? What more do I need to do to get you to buy it?  Maybe some kind of special offer ...

From June 26th 2014 to July 5th 2014, to celebrate 10 years of Packt, you can buy my book in eBook form for a mere $10 - the price of a couple of small beers.  

This offer also applies to all ebooks (after you’ve bought mine, obviously) and videos (I don’t have one of these to pitch, so you are safe there).

You can find out more information at: http://bit.ly/VaVEba

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I Say You Buy One, You Get One Free

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(For those who aren’t regular viewers of English commercial tv, the title of this post is from the Safestyle Windows advert)

As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I wrote a book last year called the Visualforce Development Cookbook - there’s even a link at the top right of this page to allow you to easily make a purchase.

The good news is that until 26th March, to celebrate Packt’s 2000th title being released, you can buy my book in eBook form and receive another Packt eBook absolutely free - perhaps another copy of my book as a gift for a close friend or relative.  

The offer is automatically applied at the checkout and there are no limits to the number of purchases you can make during the offer period.  You can find out more at: http://bit.ly/1j26nPN

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Writing a Book

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(This post is based on my personal experience writing for Packt - your mileage may vary!)

Since I wrote the Visualforce Development Cookbook I’ve had a number of people,  who are either thinking about writing a book or have been approached by a publisher, ask me what it was like.  Rather than continuing to drip feed this information to individuals, I’ve decided to write a blog post about it. 

There’s lots of information on writing for Packt at the Packt Author Website - I’d recommend spending some time there if you think there’s a book in you.

How It Started

I was asked by Packt to act as a Technical Reviewer for the Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook. As I was carrying out my tech review duties I started wondering whether I could write one myself, but didn’t take it any further than that.  A month or two after this finished, I was contacted by Packt and asked if I’d be interested in authoring a new book on Visualforce that they were planning to publish later in the year.  After some email exchanges where I found out more about what was involved, I took the plunge and signed up to write the book.

Its a Lot of Work!

Writing a book is rather different to writing occasional blogs and articles.   Once you factor in a full-time day job, it means giving up a large amount of your spare time. I found the best way was to try to write some content every day, so I averaged 1-2 hours every evening and around 10 hours every weekend. I also had a weeks vacation about half-way through the first drafts, and I spent most of the week breaking the back of a chapter. You definitely need an understanding family to take on a project of this nature as you are looking at several hundred hours work. 

There’s a Delivery Schedule

and you have to stick to it.  Most of the time this is fine, but there are times when fitting in the work gets pretty tricky.  Around the time that the first drafts were coming back for corrections, Salesforce hosted the MVP Summit in San Francisco, which was a pretty full couple of days.  The schedule was still there though, so after the summit dinner I found myself writing second drafts until 3am prior to flying back first thing in the morning and producing updated images while boarding was delayed. 

Get Organised!

Each chapter required images, Visualforce pages, Apex classes and sometimes static resources and custom Visualforce components. When I started out I had a single directory that I put everything into and broke up into zip files when I had to submit a chapter.  This became harder and harder to control as the volume of content grew, until it got to the point where I had to spend an afternoon moving everything into dedicated chapter directories, with subdirectories for different drafts, images and the various source items.  This is something I wish I’d thought of at the beginning, as I would have much preferred to spend the time producing new content rather than filing and refiling the existing items.

Be Grateful for Technical Reviewers

Tech Reviewers  provide invaluable feedback - typically they are more experienced than the target audience for the book and they will go through each of the chapters with a fine tooth comb, not only looking for problems but also how to make things better - additions to recipes to make them more reusable for example. Having carried out this task before, I’m well aware of how much effort goes into this.

At times you’ll get annoyed with the comments from your technical reviewers.  Most of the time this comes down to “they don’t understand!”. When you start feeling this way its important to take a step back - if they don’t understand its because you as the author haven’t explained yourself correctly. All the reviewer has to go on are the words that you have written - if an experienced individual can’t grasp the point you are trying to make, what chance does the less experienced reader stand?  

All that said, its important to remember that its your book that goes out with your name on it, so just because a reviewer suggests a change doesn’t mean you have to make it. 

The Book is Published but You’re not Done

Once the book is written and published, you might think that you are done. You aren’t, as now you are into the marketing phase. This is where you’ll need to be publicising the book on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs etc.  The good news is that you don’t have to figure all this out yourself, rather you’ll get a specialist assigned to you by the publisher.

Its Rewarding

Nothing beats the feeling of:

• seeing your book on sites like Amazon, Safari and Barnes and Noble
• getting your first print copy with your name on the spine

While its a lot of hard work, I really enjoyed it and I’m hoping to write more in the future.

Any Questions?

If you have any specific questions, please post them in the comments section for this post - if I can answer them I’ll bring them up into a Q&A section.

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Book Review - Visualforce Developer's Guide

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(Disclaimer: I didn’t purchase this book - I was sent an e-copy to review by Packt Publishing).

Book reviews are like buses - you wait for ages and then two come along at once. (This is a well-worn British joke about the unreliability of public transport - if you live in a country where public transport is efficient, please ignore this).

The Visualforce Developer’s Guide covers a number of topics from getting started through to security best practice via controllers and custom components, among others. including an unexpected (for me at least) chapter on using Visualforce in the Salesforce mobile (now classic) applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. While these are in maintenance only mode, they are still the best Salesforce mobile solutions for offline access to data and the only installed application options for windows mobile and blackberry.

While there is a lot of useful information in this book, my main criticism is around the introduction of each new technology.  In the main it is just dropped on the reader without much explanation of why its a good idea to use it. If I were new to something like the JQuery JavaScript framework, for example, I’d want to understand why I should be using that as opposed to vanilla JavaScript - and as I’m not new to JQuery I know there are a number of good reasons.

This is a good book, but it could have been great with a little more emphasis on educating the reader rather than just showing them the mechanics.

You can purchase the book at:

http://www.packtpub.com/visualforce-developers-guide/book?utm_source=mention.com&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=book_mention.com

Book Review - Developing Applications with Salesforce Chatter

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(Disclaimer - I didn’t purchase this book - I was sent an e-copy to review by Packt Publishing)

This is an interesting idea for a book - Salesforce have been pushing the collaboration theme for a while, but aside from a few short papers and the Salesforce system help, there isn’t a much information out there for those that are considering enabling and extending chatter.

The book suffers from a confused first chapter that can’t make up its mind if it is selling chatter, pushing the benefits of collaboration or demonstrating how the return on investment can be calculated.  Unfortunately it ends up not doing any of them very well and if I were new to chatter I don’t think I’d have a better understanding of what it is or the benefits after reading it.

The chapters on configuring and using chatter are much better - the instructions are clear and there are plenty of examples. One minor criticism is that I’d like to have seen more scenarios that covered why it is better to do things in chatter than using other mechanisms, but that is being picky.

Later sections introduce the concepts of extending chatter functionality using Apex, Visualforce and the Chatter REST API. These sections would benefit from a clearer introduction to the concepts that will be covered.  Batch apex, for example, has a cursory couple of lines to introduce the mechanics when it would do better to either explain the concept and purpose of batch apex and then cover the mechanics, or point the reader at resources where they can learn how batch apex works before continuing.  Again, if I didn’t know batch apex before reading this section I don’t think I’d be in a position to apply the technique to other scenarios.  This might seem a little harsh as the book does state that you need some knowledge of Visualforce and Apex for this chapter, but batch is a somewhat advanced topic which would benefit from a better explanation.

In summary, this is a useful book if you want to learn how to configure and use Chatter, and perform some simple extensions/enhancements using Apex and Visualforce. However, if you want to dig deeper, while this book will give you some ideas, you probably need to be familiar with the language or platform features.

The bool is available at: https://www.packtpub.com/developing-applications-with-salesforce-chatter/book

Contest

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Win Free E-Copies of Visualforce Development Cookbook

This week I’ve teamed up with Packt Publishing to organise a giveaway of my new book - Visualforce Development Cookbook.  

Three lucky winners will receive an e-copy of the book - keep reading to find out how you can be one of these lucky winners.

Overview

• Write effective controller tests
• Maintain multiple records from a single page
• Produce re-usable components for utility functions
• Create custom charts to visualise single or multiple sets of data
• Redraw part of a page in response to user input
• Replace standard components with custom, brand able versions
• Provide access to data via a public website
• Allow users to create and retrieve data from a mobile device

How to enter?

All you need to do is head on over to the book page, look through the product description of the book and drop a line via the comments for this post, including your email address, to let us know what interests you about this book. Its that simple!  

Deadline

The contest will close on 3rd November 2013. Winners will be contact by email, so be sure to use your real email address when you comment!

Update 04/11/2013 - the contest is now closed.  Winners will be announced shortly.

Update 06/11/2013  - and the winners have been chosen.

Congratulations:  Dennis Onyango, King Koo, Anil Bathula.  You’ll hear from Packt pubishing via email on how to access your e-copy of my book.

Commiserations to those that entered but didn’t win - watch out for more contests in the coming weeks.

Good luck!

 

Visualforce Development Cookbook

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Regular visitors to this blog may have noticed that my rate of blogging slowed considerably over the summer.  This is because since April I've been writing a book for Packt publishing, the Visualforce Development Cookbook.  This was published on 24th September 2013 and is available for purchase from Packt or a number of stores here.

I'm planning a blog post to cover the whole experience, but as I'm still in the thick of it (we're just entering the marketing phase at the moment) it will be a little while until I'm ready to write that post.

In the meantime, you can follow the book on twitter or like the facebook page - any news or offers will break there first. 

Book Reviewers Wanted

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Earlier this year I acted as a Technical Reviewer for the CRM Admin Cookbook.  This means its a little tricky for me to review in this blog, as I obviously ensured everything was perfect and there was no way to improve it :)

Packt Publishing are offering free copies of Salesforce CRM Admin Cookbook : http://www.packtpub.com/salesforce-crm-admin-cookbook/book in exchange for a review either on your blog or on the title’s Amazon page.

The book covers the following areas:

• Building home page components and creating custom links to provide additional functionality and improve the Home Tab layout
• Advanced user interface techniques to improve the look and feel of Salesforce CRM with the presentation of graphical elements
• Exposing hacks and hidden features to enhance and override native aspects of Salesforce CRM
• Automatic data capture and improving data quality in Salesforce CRM
• Implementing an approval process to control the way approvals are managed for records in Salesforce CRM
• Increasing productivity using tools and features to provide advanced administration
• Configuring and installing Salesforce for Microsoft Outlook email integration
• Integrating Salesforce CRM with external online tools to provide enhanced functionality and extend the power of Salesforce CRM 

If you’re a Salesforce CRM user or interested in getting to grips with it, this is a good way to bag yourself a free guide (current retail price £28).

Free review copies are available until Monday 5th June 2013

If you’re interested, email Harleen Kaur Bagga at: harleenb@packtpub.com

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Thoughts on Dreamforce 2012

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Dreamforce is Huge!

In fact it was huge in 2011, I really need a new word for 2012.  Over 90,000 registrants and I've heard numbers between 50 and 80,000 actually turned up.  As well as the Moscone Center (that's North, South and West), Dreamforce now includes 34 hotels.  It feels like there's a tipping point approaching - just how much bigger can it and stay in its current location.  We all know Marc Benioff loves San Francisco so I imagine it would be hard for him to move it to somewhere like Las Vegas.  Another idea I heard was to split it by functionality into multiple weeks - personally I think that would lose some of the sense of occasion - a drip feed of small conferences rather than one mega-event.  I'd also imagine that would put quite a lot more stress on the SFDC employees - having to organise and staff multiple events, trying to get prospects, customers and partners to attend each of these in equal measure - that sounds like it would bring as many problems as it would solve.  All I know so far is that the Moscone Center is booked for November 18^th-22^nd 2013, so it looks like its staying put for a while.

Salesforce Values Its MVPs

If you are an MVP you get treated rather well at Dreamforce - thanks mainly to the the amazing Erica Kuhl.  This year included a tour of One Market, a bowling event, a shoutout at the Community Keynote, Force.com MVP lunch (thanks Dana Le and Nick Tran), VIP seating for the keynotes and much more.  

Get To The Community Lounge

The Community Lounge is a great innovation. Its the place to find an MVP outside of their sessions and there were daily presentations on hot community topics.  Aside from that, the wifi was solid and there were comfortable seats and beanbags.  When I needed to work during the event, or relax and eat lunch, this was my preferred location.

Keynotes Are Popular And Run Long

If you want to hear the keynotes in person, you need to be up with the lark.  The rooms aren't big enough to hold everyone that wants to attend, so you need to get in line early, especially if you want a good view.  I always enjoy Dan Darcy's involvement in these - there's a real frisson of excitement when the screens switch over to him and his team.

Keynotes always overrun, but this year it was pretty much a full hour over.  Something to bear in mind when reserving your spots at sessions immediately after - I had nothing scheduled until 12 but still didn't make it.  Being in the VIP seats a few rows from the front does make up for it though.

Don't Stress About Your Agenda

There are so many sessions on at any one time, you are never going to be able to fit in all of those that you want to attend. Add to that keynotes running long, unexpected networking opportunities, meetings with or entertaining customers, distances between venues being larger than expected and simply being tired, and you'll find you can't even keep up with those that you added to your agenda. Don't sweat it, most sessions aside from roadmap are recorded and made available on the Dreamforce Youtube Channel so you can always catch up afterwards.  Once you realise that you are missing most of the sessions anyway, due to their being only one of you, its easier to relax about it.  Get to as many sessions as you can, but don't get so hung up that you miss out on the rest of the conference.

Dev Zone Is Awesome

Bigger and better than ever this year.  Unconference, mini-hacks, community common, developer theatre, touch stadium and more sessions than you could hope to get to.  The Workbooks and Salesforce Touch Platform books were very popular - by the second day these were being rationed and handed out from a counter rather than the free-for-all of the first day, which presumably depleted stocks to a worrying level. Throw in video games, code consults, t-shirt printing and a mini-expo and what more could you want.

Developer Keynote Is Unmissable

Okay so as a developer I'm biased, but this was the first year with a Developer Keynote, which included exciting announcements, entertaining demos (even, dare I say especially, those that didn't work) and a free copy of Advanced Apex Programming for everyone that attended (including those that were in line but couldn't get in). Next year this needs to be in the big room and last 3 hours like Marc Benioff's keynote!

You Don't Have to Stay in a Hotel

The hotels fill up quickly around Dreamforce time - the amount of people staying at the airport or over in Oakland was surprising.  If there are a group of you going, consider hiring a house or an apartment.  This is our our team from BrightGen did it this year and it works really well, you get the common areas of the kitchen and lounge plus your own space (as long as there are enough bedrooms!).

You May Be Going "Out Out"

When you leave your hotel/apartment/house in the morning, you may think you are just spending the day at the conference and will be returning prior to heading out to one of the parties in the evening.  Be prepared that this may not be the case - there are so many events, drinks, meetups and tweetups going on that you can easily find yourself out for the whole day and evening.  

You're Going To Need A Bigger Suitcase

Pretty much every everything on the baggage carousel at Heathrow was spherical or had a 'heavy' tag on it.  Make sure you leave plenty of room for schwag - even if you don't plan on getting any, you are bound to end up with some books and t-shirts at the very least. Failing that, buy an empty suitcase out there and fill it up for your return.

Nothing On Announcements?

You may be surprised that none of my thoughts on Dreamforce cover the Force.com/developer announcements - that's because the next London Meetup will be a panel guided discussion on these topics, so if you want to hear more about those then join us for that.  If you need another reason to attend, Adam Seligman, VP of Developer Platform Marketing for Salesforce.com, is the special guest. 

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Book Review - Advanced Apex Programming

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Disclaimer: Dan Appleman sent me a copy of the book to review.  I was going to buy it anyway and reading it has convinced me that would have been one of my better decisions.

In a first for the Bob Buzzard Blog, its book review time. If you are a Force.com developer you may well have seen a flurry of activity in early August around a new book by Dan Appleman entitled "Advanced Apex Programming". My curiosity was piqued by the news as it was immediately clear to me (and no doubt many others - the wonder of hindsight!) that there was a big gap in the market here. It received the Dave Carroll seal of approval shortly after, which is more than enough justification to purchase as far as I'm concerned.

The first line of the introduction promises that this book is not a rehash of the Salesforce Apex documentation and it was a relief to find that really was the case, even towards the end of the book which in my experience of development books is when authors can run out of steam and resort to regurgitation.

The style of the writing is quite conversational, which makes the text sections an easy read for a book that covers advanced development techniques and patterns. The example code is often a different matter - not because its badly written, but because it takes (or took me anyway!) a couple of iterations to understand exactly what it is doing. Its worth putting the effort in to understand the code though, as when you do get to grips with it there will be a few light bulb moments when you realise how useful this new technique you have learnt would have been in the past.

Probably the most interesting section for me was Application Architecture and Patterns - there are some great concepts for trigger handling and asynchronous processing. I also learnt a few things about Apex - at least one of which made me want to bang my head against a wall and cry out "why?". I'm pretty sure that knowing these facts will save any reader several times the book's cost.

The final chapter of the book covers patterns and approaches for developing managed packages and is definitely worth reading and re-reading if you are in that space. Dealing with the presence (or lack thereof) of Person Accounts, for example, is something I've never really thought about in this context, even though I have worked with a number of organisations that have this feature enabled.

A refreshing change for a book presenting development best practice was the recognition that:

(a) the point of professional software development is to make money, and
(b) developing solutions for individual customers on a consulting basis is very different to developing applications intended for widespread use

and thus your approach to writing code and tests needs to reflect this.

Finally, a few words for the less experienced. If you are relatively new to the Apex programming language, you'll find large parts of this book a struggle. However, there is one chapter that every Apex programmer should be made to read before being let loose on a live organisation and that is chapter 3 - Limits. Limits are something that all designs should take into account, because regardless of how unlikely you feel it is that your code will ever be used in a way that would breach limits, you can't predict what will happen in the future and what other code yours will be forced to co-exist with. This chapter has some excellent examples of how code can fail to scale and what you can do to avoid this.

I learnt a lot from reading this book, more than I'd expected to, if I'm honest, and I'm sure I'll learn more when I use these patterns in anger and re-read chapters. I'd recommend it if you are looking to improve your Apex development skills (and if you think your Apex development skills can't be improved, then you should definitely read it!).