Introducing Salesforce objects

In this section, we will look at the foundational data structure in Salesforce – objects. This includes looking at what Salesforce objects are, their properties, and their usage. I will be suggesting best practices and principles to keep in mind when working with both standard and custom objects and other types of objects available on the platform. Applying these best practices when working with objects will help us keep our organizations scalable for that next enhancement or major project and deliver increased usability for our end users. The intent here is to briefly review the different objects and field types in Salesforce before we go into a detailed discussion of data modeling. This will make it easier to understand and grasp the data model concepts and provide a good foundation as regards when to use the different relationship types.

We will start with standard objects, which are the most commonly used and familiar to us, and then review...