APEX Short Notes (2) - Usage and Components

When it comes to APEX, there are certain things that you can and can't do with it.

Use Apex if you want to:

• Create Web services.
• Create email services.
• Perform complex validation over multiple objects.
• Create complex business processes that are not supported by workflow.
• Create custom transactional logic (logic that occurs over the entire transaction, not just with a single record or object).
• Attach custom logic to another operation, such as saving a record, so that it occurs whenever the operation is executed, regardless of whether it originates in the user interface, a Visualforce page, or from SOAP API.

Apex cannot be used to:

• Render elements in the user interface other than error messages
• Change standard functionality—Apex can only prevent the functionality from happening, or add additional functionality
• Create temporary files
• Spawn threads

And when you consider selesforce development, there are following components that help you out with the extended development:

Lightning Components

Develop Lightning components to customize Lightning Experience, the Salesforce app, or to build your own standalone apps. You can also use out-of-the-box components to speed up development.

Visualforce

Visualforce consists of a tag-based markup language that gives developers a more powerful way of building applications and customizing the Salesforce user interface. With Visualforce you can:

• Build wizards and other multistep processes.
• Create your own custom flow control through an application.
• Define navigation patterns and data-specific rules for optimal, efficient application interaction.

SOAP API

Use standard SOAP API calls if you want to add functionality to a composite application that processes only one type of record at a time and does not require any transactional control (such as setting a Savepoint or rolling back changes).