Quick development, faster collaboration, and greater innovation is the maxim of new Salesforce DX. This comprehensive development platform consists of a fair set of equipment for the modern-day enterprise application developers to enhance their efficiency and speed in the development lifecycle. As we can see, Salesforce DX now addresses many existing challenges and also helps the administrators to handle things in a better way.
The developers previously on Salesforce used the sandboxes in order to code and test the changes made in real-time. This could also cause some issues related to moving sources of truth, which is not there in the respective sandbox. However, Salesforce DX effectively addresses these two and puts forth a brand-new method of defining the source of truth with the help of a central source control system that is known as a source-driven approach.
Even if this latest developmental environment by Salesforce DX does not fully eradicate the confusion and conflict, it addresses many major challenges in terms of development and also moves to a more appropriate source control system, which may make the process more efficient and user-friendly. This approach makes things easier for developers and also brings more visibility to the current and previous versions.
Features of Salesforce DX
There are many additional features now on Salesforce DX, which makes it easy for the development teams to plan and make the releases much easier. These are called unlocked packages, offering a replicable and traceable mode of managing changes on org’s. This is beneficial for both corporate development teams and developers alike, and Salesforce DX may also offer a handful of tools to work in a much efficient and effective way.
Another major feature in Salesforce DX is agile development supported by the new Salesforce DX suite under command-line interface (CLI), integrated development environment (IDE). Along with these, you may even use your exiting tools, including even the basic text editors.
The methodologies used are open and flexible by offering the benefits of continuous integration as well as ongoing delivery. Above all, Salesforce DX may also offer a brand-new approach for the developers to create custom apps by gaining better control and flexibility over the lifecycle.
The lifecycle development tools of Salesforce DX
As we can see above, Salesforce DX is meant to increase the productivity and quality of development by providing an apt environment that will let the developers work in a more collaborative manner on the Salesforce DX platform. This is kept as an open development environment, which will make the entire development process much quicker and easier by letting the developers maintain their focus primarily on quality assurance. This approach also brings in more predictability in the standard lifecycle and let developer build and delivery simultaneously.
There are many new developer tools offered by Salesforce DX as Scratch Org, Dev Hub, SFDX CLI, and Managed Packaging, etc. However, as Expert suggests, the developers need not have to use these in-built tools mandatorily, but they have the option to choose any other tools, too, which they are used to. You can even use the basic text editor people tend to use for coding to work with the Salesforce CLI or any other useful Visual Studio Code or Salesforce Extensions. The users also have the authority to select the version control system they could use in their projects. Also, while using the Salesforce Extensions for Visual Studio, different extensions are available out there to develop with the use of Salesforce DX.
The old Salesforce platform did not have any advanced version control system, but new DX has many features, which we will discuss in a bit more detail as below. By making use of all these tools and features, developers could now better manage testing and auditing of their project much effectively. In order to do it well, the DX users need to have a better understanding of the tools and terminology, which we will discuss here.
Salesforce DX technical terminology
Dev Hub
On installing the new SFDX command-line interface and running the commands, the developers need first to authenticate it at the Dev Hub. This will create a better manageable development environment known as Scratch Org. Dev Hub could be turned on instantly from the Production org, but the changes made cannot be undone. Dev Hub capacities will let the developers create the user records using specific permissions to the users.
Managed Packaging
On SFDX, now it is much easier and quicker to organize metadata and distribute the apps further through a CLI-centric manner. With this approach, it becomes easier to manage the application lifecycle in an automated manner. Managed packaging mode of DX will offer a much-sophisticated system for managing metadata.
Scratch Orgs
This is another common term that the developers come across during SFDX development, which is primarily a source-drive and disposable environment for code deployment as well as metadata. Scratch Org is custom configurable, and the developers could also easily emulate different editions of their Salesforce applications by choosing the appropriate features needed for a project. The Scratch org files could be shared easily with the team, and it can also access the same org for the development. This makes it much easier for the developers to create, edit, run or remove the development environments at their comfort.
Overall, Salesforce DX is featuring many new things for optimization of the development and testing process. Being a few mentioned above, Salesforce DX is featuring a unique set of developmental tools that could support different metadata types and can also offer a higher-level interface to enjoy a much-advanced developer experience. All these tools are available openly to the community. The developers on Salesforce DX are also free to adopt these technologies as a whole or just some part of it as they like. There is also an additional toolkit to supplement Salesforce DX tools in order to optimize the development projects at various stages. As we discussed above, the developers could also use their own tools in combination with these to feel more comfortable at work.
Contributed by – Sujain Thomas
Sujain Thomas is a writer and SEO expert. Nowadays Sujain manages and writes for Flosum.com. Her primary focus is on “Salesforce DX”. She is responsible for building content that helps IT professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.
