Force.com Developer Glossary

Force.com Developer Glossary

When learning a new language or platform, you’re often faced with a barrage of new terms and acronyms. This glossary provides definitions for the most common terms that you’ll encounter as you learn about Force.com.

Apex Code (also known as Apex or Force.com Code)

Force.com Apex Code is a strongly-typed programming language that executes on the Force.com platform. Apex is used to add business logic to applications, to write database triggers, and to program controllers in the user interface layer.

Visualforce (also known as Force.com Pages)

Visualforce is the component-based user interface framework for the Force.com platform. The framework includes a tag-based markup language, similar to HTML. Each Visualforce tag corresponds to a coarse or fine-grained user interface component, such as a section of a page, or a field.

Force.com

An on-demand application-sharing service and platform from salesforce.com that allows you to browse, install, and share apps and components built for the Force.com platform. The Force.com platform combines a powerful user interface, operating system, and customization and integration capabilities for CRM—plus a framework for development and deployment of new applications for your entire enterprise.

Force.com app menu

A menu that enables users to switch between customizable applications (or "apps") with a single click. The Force.com app menu displays at the top of every page in the user interface.

Developer Force (also known as developer.force.com or DFC

The website at www.salesforce.com/developer that provides a full range of resources for Force.com developers, including sample code, toolkits, an online developer community, and the test environments necessary for building apps.

Force.com SOAP API

An application programming interface that defines a Web service that provides direct access to all data stored in Force.com from virtually any programming language and platform.

App

A collection of Salesforce components such as tabs, reports, dashboards, and custom s-controls that address a specific business need. Short for "application."

AppExchange directory

A Web directory where hundreds of Force.com apps are available to Salesforce customers to review, demo, comment upon, and/or install. Force.com developers can submit their apps for listing on AppExchange if they wish to share them with the community.

Application programming interface(API)

The interface that a computer system, library, or application provides in order to allow other computer programs to request services from it and exchange data between them.

Auto number

A custom field type that automatically adds a unique sequential number to each record.

Client app

An app that runs outside the Salesforce user interface and uses only the Force.com API—typically running on a desktop or mobile device. These apps treat the Force.com platform as a data source, using the development model of whatever tool and platform for which they are designed.

Composite app

An app that combines native Force.com platform functionality with one or more external Web services, such as Yahoo! Maps. Allows for more flexibility in the app and integration with other services, but may require running and managing external code.

Controlling field

Any standard or custom picklist or checkbox field whose values control the available values in one or more corresponding dependent fields.

Custom field

Fields that can be added to customize an object for your organization’s needs.

Custom HTML S-Control

An S-Control that contains the actual HTML that should be rendered on a page. When saved this way, the HTML is ultimately hosted on an Force.com platform server.

Custom link

A custom URL defined by an administrator to integrate your data with external websites and back-office systems.

Custom object

An object that you build to store information that's unique to your app.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

A business strategy for developing and improving relations between companies and their customers.

Database

An organized collection of information. The underlying architecture of the Force.com platform includes a database where your data is stored.

Database table

A list of information, presented with rows and columns, about the person, thing, or concept you want to track.

Dependent field

Any custom picklist or multi-select picklist field that displays available values based on the value selected in its corresponding controlling field.

Email template

A built-in feature for writing emails to users and contacts in your organization that enables you to create form emails that communicate a standard message, such as a welcome letter to new employees or an acknowledgement that a customer service request has been received.

Entity relationship diagram (ERD)

A data modeling tool that helps you organize your data into entities (or objects, as they are called in the Force.com platform) and define the relationships between them.

Field

A part of an object that holds a specific piece of information, such as a text or currency value.

Field dependency

A filter that allows you to change the contents of a picklist based on the value of another field.

Field-level security

Settings that determine whether fields are hidden, visible, read only, or editable for users based on their profiles.

Foreign key

A field whose value is the same as the primary key of another table. You can think of a foreign key as a copy of a primary key from another table. A relationship is made between two tables by matching the values of the foreign key in one table with the values of the primary key in another.

Formula field

A type of custom field that automatically calculate its value based on the values of merge fields, expressions, or other values.

Function

Built-in formulas that you can customize with input parameters. For example, the DATE function creates a date field type from a given year, month, and day.

Group

A set of users that can contain individual users, other groups, or the users in a role. Groups can be used to help define sharing access to data.

Home tab

The starting page from which users can choose sidebar shortcuts and options, view current tasks and activities, or select each of the major tabs.

Junction object

A custom object that enables a many-to-many relationship between two other objects.

Lookup relationship

A relationship between two objects that allows you to associate records with each other. On one side of the relationship, a lookup field allows users to click a lookup icon and select another record from a list. On the associated record, you can then display a related list to show all of the records that have been linked to it.

Manual sharing

Record-level access rule that allows record owners to give read and edit permissions to other users who might not have access to the record any other way.

Merge field

A field you can place in an email template, mail merge template, custom link, or formula to incorporate values from a record. For example, "Dear {!Contact.FirstName}," uses a contact merge field to obtain the value of a contact record's First Name field to address an email recipient by his or her first name.

Metadata-driven development

An app development model that allows apps to be defined as declarative “blueprints,” with no code required. Force.com apps—their data models, objects, forms, workflows, and more—are defined by metadata.

Multitenancy

An application model where all users and apps share a single, common infrastructure and code base.

Native app

A type of Force.com app that is built exclusively via metadata configuration and without coding. Runs entirely on the Force.com platform without need for external services or infrastructure.

Object

In Force.com terms, an object is similar to a database table--a list of information, presented with rows and columns, about the person, thing, or concept you want to track. Each object automatically has built-in features like a user interface, a security and sharing model, workflow processes, and much more.

Object-level security

Settings that allow an administrator to hide whole tabs and objects from a user, so that they don't even know that type of data exists. In the Force.com platform, you set object-level access rules with object permissions on user profiles.

On-demand computing

A new paradigm of computing in which you access apps over the network as a utility, rather than as a piece of software running on your desktop or in the server room.

One-to-many relationship

A relationship in which a single object is related to many other objects. For example, in a recruiting app, each Candidate may have one or more Job Applications.

Org-wide defaults

Settings that allow you to specify the baseline level of data access that a user has in your organization. For example, you can make it so that any user can see any record of a particular object that's enabled in their user profile, but that they'll need extra permissions to actually edit one.

Page layout

The organization of fields, custom links, related lists, and other components on a record detail or edit page. Use page layouts primarily for organizing pages for your users, rather than for security.

Picklist

A selection list of options available for specific fields, for example, the Country field for a Candidate object. Users can choose a single value from a list of options rather than make an entry directly in the field.

Picklist values

The selections displayed in drop-down lists for particular fields. Some values come predefined, and other values can be changed or defined by an administrator.

Primary key

A relational database concept. Each table in a relational database has a field in which the data value uniquely identifies the record. This field is called the primary key. The relationship is made between two tables by matching the values of the foreign key in one table with the values of the primary key in another.

Profile

A setting that defines a user’s permission to perform different functions.

Record

A single instance of an object. For example, within a recruiting app, Software Engineer is a single instance of the Position object.

Record-level security

A method of controlling data in which we can allow particular users to view an object, but then restrict the individual object records that they're allowed to see.

Related list

A section of a record or other detail page that lists items related to that record.

Relationship

A connection between two objects. Matching values in a specified field in both objects are used to link related data; for example, if one object stores data about companies and another object stores data about people, a relationship would allow you to find out which people work at the company.

Role hierarchy

A record-level security setting that defines different levels of users such that users at higher levels can view and edit information owned by or shared with users beneath them in the role hierarchy, regardless of the organization-wide sharing model settings.

Search layout

The organization of fields included in search results, in lookup dialogs, and in the recent items lists on tab home pages.

Sharing model

A security model that defines the default organization-wide access levels that users have to each other’s information.

Sharing rules

Rules that allow an administrator to specify that all information created by users within a given group or role is automatically shared to the members of another group or role. They also provide the ability to make automatic exceptions to org-wide defaults for particular groups of users.

Snippet

A type of s-control that's designed to be included in other s-controls. Similar to a helper method that is used by other methods in a piece of code, a snippet allows you to maintain a single copy of HTML or JavaScript that you can reuse in multiple s-controls.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

A protocol that defines a uniform way of passing XML-encoded data.

SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language)

A query language that allows you to construct simple but powerful query strings and to specify the criteria that should be used to select the data.

Standard object

A built-in object included with the Force.com platform when you first start using it. You can also build your own custom objects to store information that's unique to your app.

S-Control

A component that you set up and define on the Force.com platform to store your custom code. Use s-controls to create and display your custom data forms using components like custom links, web tabs, or custom buttons. For example, you can define a custom s-control containing JavaScript and address merge fields to display a map of a contact's address.

Tab

An interface item that allows you to navigate around an app. A tab serves as the starting point for viewing, editing, and entering information for a particular object. When you click a tab at the top of the page, the corresponding tab home page for that object appears.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

The global address of a website, document, or other resource on the Internet. For example, http://www.salesforce.com.

URL S-Control

An S-Control that contains an external URL that hosts the HTML that should be rendered on a page. When saved this way, the HTML is ultimately hosted by an external web site.

Web service

A mechanism by which two applications can easily exchange data over the Internet, even if they run on different platforms, are written in different languages, or are geographically remote from each other.

Web tab

A custom tab that allows your users to use your Web applications or other websites from within the application.

Workflow alert

An email that is sent according to a specified email template when a workflow rule is triggered. Unlike workflow tasks, which can only be assigned to application users, workflow alerts can be sent to any user or contact, as long as they have a valid email address.

Workflow field update

The change to the value of a particular field on the record that occurs when a workflow rule is initially triggered.

Workflow rule

A "container" for a set of workflow instructions that includes the criteria for when the workflow should be activated, as well as the particular tasks, alerts, and field updates that should take place when the criteria for that rule are met.

Workflow task

The task that is assigned to an application user when a workflow rule is triggered.