Pass the Salesforce Integration Architecture Designer Integration-Architect Questions and answers with CertsForce

Platform Events are a type of event-driven architecture that allows you to publish and subscribe to events in Salesforce and external systems. To subscribe to an event, the integration user in Salesforce needs read access to the event entity, which defines the schema and properties of the event message. To publish an event, the integration user in Salesforce needs create permission on the event entity, which is a special type of sObject that can be inserted into the platform event queue. Error handling must be performed by the remote service because the event is effectively handed off to the remote system for further processing. Salesforce does not guarantee the delivery or acknowledgment of the event by the external system. The external system should implement its own logic to handle errors, such as retrying failed events, logging errors, or sending notifications. References: Certification - IntegrationArchitect - Trailhead, [Platform Events Developer Guide]

Named Credentials and Two way SSL are two security methods that an integration architect can leverage within Salesforce to secure the integration with an external system via HTTPS request. Named Credentials are a type of metadata that store authentication settings for accessing external services. They allow you to specify the URL of a service,the authentication protocol, and the credentials for accessing the service. Two way SSL is a type ofmutual authentication that requires both the client and the server to present their certificates to each other. This ensures that both parties are who theyclaim to be, and that the communication is encrypted. Two way SSL can be configured in Salesforce by uploading a certificate and a private key, and associating them with a named credential. References: Certification - Integration Architect - Trailhead, [Named Credentials], [Mutual Authentication]

The set of APIs recommended to meet the requirements are Bulk API, Streaming API, Apex REST API, and Analytics REST API. Bulk API is a RESTful API that allows you to quickly load large amounts of data into Salesforce. Bulk API is suitable for the initial load of millions of records into the new org. Streaming API is a type of streaming event that notifies subscribers of changes to Salesforce records that match a SOQL query. Streaming API is suitable for sending notifications of new and updated Accounts and Contacts to external systems. Apex REST API is an API that allows you to expose custom business logic as RESTful web services that can be accessed by external applications. Apex REST API is suitable for exposing custom business logic in a highly secure manner. Analytics REST API is an API that allows you to access analytics features, such as dashboards, lenses, datasets, and dataflows. Analytics REST API is suitable for scheduling nightly automated dataflows, recipes and data syncs. The other sets of APIs are not suitable for meeting all the requirements. Chatter REST API is an API that allows you to access Chatter feeds and social data such as users, groups, followers, and files. Chatter REST API is not relevant for this scenario. Apex SOAP API is an API that allows you to expose custom business logic as SOAP web services that can be accessed by external applications. ApexSOAP API is less preferable than Apex REST API because it requires more bandwidth and processing time due to the XML format. Tooling API is an API that allows you to build custom development tools or apps for Salesforce applications. Tooling API is not relevant for this scenario.

 Invoking middleware service to retrieve valid shipping methods is a solution that can allow the sales representatives to select between valid services for the customer’s country. The middleware service can act as a single point of entry for all shipping services and provide routing and transformation capabilities. Using middleware to abstract the call to the specific shipping services is a solution that can allow the sales representatives to request shipping estimates from the selected service. The middleware can hide thecomplexity and heterogeneity of the shipping services and provide mediation and orchestration capabilities. Using Platform Events to construct and publish shipper-specific events is not a solution, as Platform Events are used for event-driven integration,not for web-service integration. Storing shipping services in a picklist that is dependent on a country picklist is not a solution, as it does not address how to request shipping estimates from the shipping services. Reference: Salesforce Integration Architecture Designer Resource Guide, page 16-17

The system requirement is to expose data from the on-premise applications to Salesforce for a more unified user experience in real-time. The possible actions that can fulfill this requirement are:

Answer B is valid becausedeveloping custom APIs on the company’s network that are invokable by Salesforce can allow Salesforce to access the data from the on-premise applications in real-time. However, this action requires opening a firewall port or using a reverse proxy to allow Salesforce to communicate with the on-premise APIs securely3

AnswerC is valid because deploying MuleSoft to the on-premise network and designing externally facing APIs to expose the data can also enable Salesforce to access the data from the on-premise applications in real-time. MuleSoft is an integration platform that can connect various systems and applications using APIs and standard protocols. MuleSoft can also handle security, orchestration, transformation, and other integration aspects.

Answer A is not valid because developing an application in Heroku that connects to the on-premise database via an ODBC string and VPC connection is not a real-time solution. Heroku is a cloud platform that can host web applications and services, but it cannot expose data from an on-premise database directly to Salesforce. To use Herokufor this purpose, an ETL tool or a middleware solution would be needed to synchronize the data between the on-premise database and Heroku, which would introduce latency and complexity to the integration.

Answer D is not valid because running a batch job with an ETL tool from an on-premise server to move data to Salesforce is also not a real-time solution. ETL stands for extract, transform, and load, which is a process of moving data from one system to another in batches. ETL toolscan be used for data migration or integration, but they cannot provide real-time access to data from on-premise applications to Salesforce. ETL tools also have limitations on data volume, frequency, and reliability.

1: Bulk API Limits 2: Bulk API Features 3: Integrating with Salesforce using Custom Web Services : MuleSoft Overview : Heroku Overview : ETL Overview