unknownHostException

I was working on a requirement in which I had to access SFDC using a java program behind a firewall. I got my basic code from Quickstart.jar that SFDC provides in their resources section.

When I tried to execute this executable it was throwing 'unknownHostException', from my previous experience I made sure that my network settings were proper in the Preferences section of Eclipse. But still I got this error.

I googled for a solution, and I found this particular reason and solution.

Reason: Even though my Force.com projects were able to connect to Internet and extract project information my Java class was unable to do so. It was because we have to make sure JRE used by Eclipse or anyother program has necessary parameters set to access internet.

Solution: Set two system variables in the main loop.

System.setProperty("proxyhost","webproxy.ssmb.com");
System.setProperty("proxyport","8080");

Force.com <> SOA <> R12

These days I have started working on a project that requires integration between some components of Oracle R12 and Salesforce.com entities.
There are more than many ways in which data in SFDC (Salesforce.com) can be accessed.

1. Build a client application using Apex API and Enterprise / Partner WSDL
2. Use some Adapter provided by SFDC
3. Use Apex Restful classes to make a web service call
4. Import the WSDL of the other application and create an Apex stub in SFDC, when a method of this stub class is invoked a remote call will be made to client service to which this WSDL belongs
5. Use AJAX Toolkit and make use of 'remoteFunction' call to call and external web service
6. Or ! you can use the much famed SOA framework to create a client stub using Enterprise / Partner / Apex WSDL's and call SFDC web service methods

As always, the best choice is made based on various other factors which are solely not confined to technology, but made based on ground realities (for you to decide the length and breadth of ground realities).

For the project which I am working the client had decided to go ahead with Oracle's Fusion suite.
Now, how does Fusion work? somebody told me it's none of my business !
I am supposed to know only about SFDC and know what SFDC is supposed to do :) Now that is exactly what I am not going to do !

Somehow I sneaked into the SOA camp and got to know what they do, and then I realise that lot of collaboration is needed.
Here are the details of what we are supposed to do
Requirement1: few records of entity "XYZ" based on a predefined condition, lets say, a field called Status = TRUE
Requirement2: Push these records into Oracle R12
Requirement3: Create log entries in SFDC of all records which were successfully inserted into Oracle R12

There is an approach that we are working on right now, will update solution as well as code in my next post, till then happy Forcing !!!

Salesforce.com & Chrome

Google has recently introduced Google Chrome, google's browser. We have to see how this browser behaves with Salesforce.com. I installed it couple of days back and was checking out the features, this browser is pretty much similar to Mozilla Firefox, I havent yet checked out the Javascript behaviour.
However Chrome createadditional development effort for the Web Developers and involves additional testing effort. But the good side is Salesforce.com has a good relationship with Google and this is reflected through the thorough integration of Salesforce.com with Google apps.
Behaviour of Salesforce.com's behaviour of newly released Visualforce markup language is yet to be tested.
There is lot of work that needs to be done to bring out the true behaviour of all these UI components.

Task - Subject field

We had a requirement to add a workflow rule to update the "Subject" field on Task entity. But when we started tried to create a Field update to that effect it was throwing a error that we have to provide a picklist value.
We tried using functions, but to no effect. We do not have methods that assign values to a piclist field. Subject field is a unique field that accepts other values other than the standard values specified.

Salesforce.com or Force.com

Salesforce.com has recently introduced Paas, Database Services, Logic as a Service offerings. These offerings are pretty attractive, what do you need to do to use all these services ?
Buy Force.com User licenses !
I have been working on Salesforce.com for over two and half years now and I still remember the limitiations that we faced when we were mapping requirements. But as on today there are few or negligible limitations, and Salesforce.com has eventually morphed into Force.com.

Any customization that is done on the instance is hosted by salesforce.com (Paas). Apex is the language, similar to Java, that implements logic (Logic as a Service), ability to create Custom Objects and create data formats (Database as a service), UI as a Service (Visualforce).

Many of these topics have been discussed at length in Salesforce.com's home page.
However, my idea of starting this blog is to update my about Salesforce.com as a product and my role as CRM consultant.