Salesforce Apex API Integration

When you implement Salesforce, you often need to integrate Salesforce with other systems. In this blog, we will discuss?What?integration means, types of APIs are provided by Salesforce.

What is Salesforce integration?

Salesforce integration is?the process of integrating your Salesforce CRM with other systems and applications, such as ERP, Marketing Automation etc. There are many reasons why businesses want to integrate Salesforce with their other systems.

Salesforce APIs:

• API stands for?Application Program Interface. Salesforce APIs are a way for other applications to programmatically access data within your Salesforce org, in a simple and secure manner.

• Salesforce APIs allow you to easily integrate back-office applications with Salesforce while leveraging existing platform choices for systems like ERP, Financials and other custom applications.?

Types of APIs in Salesforce:

Salesforce offers multiple kinds of APIs (different types of doors that is), for the data to move through. They are:

• Apex REST API
• Apex SOAP API
• Bulk API
• Streaming API

Apex SOAP API:

• SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol, and is an XML based messaging protocol.
• It is one of the most common integration methodology that you would see in large enterprises, as SOAP has been around for a long time, and many legacy applications support only SOAP integrations.
• Use SOAP API to create, retrieve, update or delete records, such as accounts, leads, and custom objects. SOAP API also allows you to maintain passwords, perform searches, and much more.
• It is also useful to understand the concept of WSDL (Web Service Description Language), which is an XML document that is used to describe and define a SOAP web service request.

REST API:

• REST stands for Representational State Transfer, which is considered to be a light weight alternative to SOAP, and therefore preferred by modern web & mobile based applications. The primary difference here is that requests are sent as an HTTP request, rather than a SOAP request.
• Its advantages include ease of integration and development, and it’s an excellent choice of technology for use with mobile applications and web projects.
• To build UI for creating, reading, updating, and deleting records, including building UI for list views, actions, and dependent picklists, use User Interface API. To build UI for Chatter, communities, or recommendations, use Chatter REST API.?

Bulk API:

• Bulk API is based on REST principles and is optimized for loading or deleting large sets of data.?
• You can use it to query, queryAll, insert, update, upsert, or delete many records asynchronously by submitting batches. Salesforce processes batches in the background.
• Bulk API is designed to make it simple to process data from a few thousand to millions of records.

Streaming API

• Streaming API enables streaming of events using push technology and provides a subscription mechanism for receiving events in near real time.
• The Streaming API subscription mechanism supports multiple types of events, including PushTopic events, generic events, platform events, and Change Data Capture events.