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Great Developer Challenge Submissions |
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 Back in December we challenged the Developer Force community to build exciting Force.com Sites applications in the Force.com Sites Developer Challenge. 348 people from all over the world registered, yielding 32 solid submissions. The challenge was open-ended, which resulted in a wide variety of submissions. Some chose to redo their company website on the Force.com platform, while others tried their hands at implementing travel reservation systems, e-commerce solutions, survey sites, and even a game—British bingo anyone?
| Here are three of the outstanding submissions: |
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For a visual extravaganza, check out Craig Traxler's gaming e-commerce store. This site combines eye-catching Visualforce and CSS, together with effective Ajax updates. All of the the eye-candy sits on top of an e-commerce store. |
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Rajendra Ogra's wiki is an outstanding example of innovation. Check out the WYSIWIG editor, comments, ratings and more. It's a great start to a full wiki system. |
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Timo Fehling and Michael Kahle built a fantastic e-commerce site, which really shows off the breadth of the platform. It boasts product recommendations, a shopping cart (handled with cookies), and an authenticated session. |
| These outstanding contributions deserve the goodies that are in the mail, but they also serve as a great reminder: Force.com Sites really does open the doors to a host of new use-cases. How are you going to take the challenge and incorporate Sites into your applications? |
| Check out Force.com Sites to learn more. |
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Spring is Here – Open the Tool Shed! |
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 Any platform release is an exciting time for a developer. Without lifting a finger, the platform on which your applications are built, is enhanced. Sometimes these enhancements are dramatic. For example, go and check out the page layout editor, which has been extended with a drag and drop WYSIWIG interface, making page layout editing a cinch.
Sometimes the enhancements are subtle. For example, the platform now has broader compatibility with external Web services, something you won’t notice until you import WSDL files.
Other enhancements in Spring '09 include data grouping functions, summary report data snapshots, mobile web tabs for the iPhone and a host of updates to the Force.com IDE, including code completion, dynamic parse results and class outline views.
So, go and check out what’s new in Spring '09 – open that shed door and explore all of those shiny new tools at your disposal.
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| New Force.com Resources |
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Ten Common Mistakes Architects Make When Building a Force.com Application |
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 Do you leverage the automatically generated user interface for persistent objects in your Force.com applications, or do you roll your own using Visualforce? Do you write custom code, or do you make use of the declarative features of the platform? This article addresses questions such as these, and their implications on architecture and project scope.
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Integrating with the Force.com Platform |
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 There are many ways to integrate with Force.com. You could invoke external SOAP-based web services, expose Apex methods as web service end-points, build REST interfaces using the HTTP functionailty, respond to incoming email, or with Force.com Sites, expose public pages and Atom feeds. This article provides an overview of these, and other, integration methods.
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An Introduction to Apex Code Test Methods |
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 In late 2006, salesforce.com made a fundamental change in the way it builds software, adopting the principles of a methodology known as agile development. This white paper shows how agile development is used within salesforce.com, and how this contributes to the delivery of the Force.com platform.
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Spring '09 Release is Now Generally Available |
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 Spring '09 has arrived, and all of your orgs are now running on the latest release of the Force.com platform. As described in the Spring '09 Release Page, this release includes a new page layout editor, enhancements to Sites, Summary Report Data Snapshots and more.
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An Introduction to Packaging |
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 This article provides an introduction to packaging and distribution on Force.com. Packages can be created and distributed in the cloud, and this is demonstrated by a simple tutorial that shows how to create and distribute an unmanaged package. The article goes on to examine the foundational concepts found in packaging.
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An Introduction to Builder |
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 To build, deploy, configure and administrate applications, you can use a powerful web-based interface called builder. You can use builder to create and modify all the declarative capabilities of the platform, such as workflow, as well as create and modify procedural assets such as Apex Code. This article introduces the user interface and its major features.
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| Sharing your Code |
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Cloud Converter |
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 Cloud Converter is an open-source Java application that analyzes the metadata of a chosen database via a JDBC driver. It then uses the Force.com Metadata API to create objects in your Force.com environment that correspond with the tables it discovered in the database. It also updates the default page layout, creates a tab for each object, and migrates the data from the database to the Force.com objects!
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Workbench 2.2.15 for Spring '09 |
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 The Workbench is a web-based application that gives administrators and developers on-demand access to useful tools for managing Salesforce organizations. Starting with a combination of the features of the Apex Data Loader, Force.com Explorer, and System Log, the Workbench can insert, upsert, update, query, search, delete, undelete, and purge data, describe metadata, or execute Apex scripts all within your web browser in a simple interface. Version 2.2.15 adds support for parent relationship queries, robust auto-login features, and full support for Spring ’09 and the Force.com Web Services API 15.0.
Both of these projects are open source. If you have some Java, PHP or Force.com skills, please join in and help extend them!
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| Welcome Our New Force.com Innovators |
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| From the Blogs |
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Navigating Relationships..... |
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Nick provides several great examples of how to navigate relationships in SOQL, using the object model from the Developer Guide as an example. |
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Why People Settle for Bad Software |
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Peter makes some very interesting points in this post, noting that "near misses activate the same reward signals in the brain as a win," which may be why so many settle for bad software. To compete, you have to offer "superior delight plus a genuine opportunity for mastery and control." |
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How Much Better Could Your Applications Be? |
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Ryan asks a great question: how much better would your applications be if you spent time on the high-value stuff, such as the data model, logic and presentation, instead of the low level details such as database connections and log files. A great comment, left on the post, reads "As experienced Java and .NET developers who have converted to Force.com, the ability to rapidly implement the business solution (as opposed to having to build and manage infrastructure) is a revolution in the way that we develop software.". Awesome! |
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Looking for Facebook Enterprise Applications? |
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Dave points to some great material on how Force.com and Facebook can be leveraged to build a solution that uses social networking, one that takes advantage of viral marketing. Also check out Force.com for Facebook, a toolkit that offers Facebook integration.
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| Force.com App of the Month: Pledge 5 by Starbucks |
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 In less than 4 weeks, Starbucks was able to rollout Pledge 5, a volunteer activism site built by Appirio using Force.com Sites and the Force.com for Facebook toolkit announced last November. The Pledge 5 site received millions of hits per day and allowed users to also add a Pledge 5 app to their Facebook profile to further drive viral awareness of the Pledge 5 campaign. |
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