Understanding the features and capabilities of external objects

We have learned about the options for importing and exporting data to and from the Lightning Platform and we have carried out some practical methods of importing or copying data into the Lightning Platform using the ETL processes of extract, transform, and load.

ETL processes generally produce copies of data in the Salesforce org, which are static references at the point of extraction and have the disadvantage that the data may not need to be permanently stored and, at some point in time, becomes out of date.

As an improvement to the integration of Salesforce and third-party systems, where data is always up to date, Salesforce provides a feature known as Salesforce Connect that uses external objects that represent the data tables and records that are located in external systems.

External objects are similar to custom objects, which we looked at in Chapter 2, Designing and Building a Data Model. Custom objects...