NYCPHP Meetup

[Paul A Houle]

Fernando Gabrieli wrote:
> Paul,
>
> First of all, thank you for sharing all this information
>
> In this case it seems like a client is already using SalesForce and 
> asking about doing some changes. So after this i've been asked about 
> how many time it would take for a developer to get into the platform
>
> My first guess was a week, then i downloaded the manual (with > 300 
> pages) and i started thinking in two weeks, but if it's Java i don't 
> think we'll be able to take it. We are doing PHP mostly, also FB apps, 
> ASP, AS, but not Java
>
> From what you are telling me, it seems like we might need to develop 
> in Java, not in PHP, is this correct?
>
    The language is APEX,  which is very similar to Java -- there's an 
IDE for APEX that runs in Eclipse.

    You definitely can write applications in some other language that 
access Salesforce via a SOAP API.  In my experience this works very well 
with Microsoft's SOAP stack in .NET,  I can't say I've ever tried it 
with PHP.  On the other hand,  if you host the whole app in Salesforce 
there are some big advantages in terms of reliability,  performance,  
not having to sysadmin,  etc.