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I'm a developer who's about to begin building a relatively complex web application. I was going to build it in Rails or some other MVC framework for PHP such as Yii.

The VP of my organization had a conversation with someone from Salesforce.com/Database.com, and now he wants to build the site on their platform with APEX.

Here's my question:

If I'm already a developer, and I already know how to use an MVC development framework (such as Rails), what possible advantages could I get from building an application in APEX on the Salesforce.com/Database.com platform?

My initial impression was that this tool was mainly helpful for non-developers.

mmix
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Philip Walton
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I think you are a bit off here, at least when it comes to salesforce.com. Although you can build public sites in salesforce using visualforce/apex it kind of seems like an overkill. SF is a primarily a prepackaged SaaS designed to help companies run parts of their operations in the cloud, with Apex being a developer extension and sites being an additional layer helping to build a public site on top of operational data. To best see for yourself register for developer account at http://developer.salesforce.com.

Bottom line, the answer mostly depends on whether or not your web application implements core operations.

mmix
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  • Interesting, I have no experience with salesforce.com/database.com, and I don't really know what they offer (hence my question). But the person my VP talked to insisted that you could build any application using their platform, and if it were extra specialized, you could customize it with APEX code. (These are his words) Also, if it wasn't clear, my application hasn't been built yet, so it could theoretically implement whatever it needed to. – Philip Walton May 11 '11 at 20:05
  • Well, don't like bashing sales people but one should always look pass the brochures. Salesforce has its ups but is not a universal glove that fits all hands and Apex is not omni-powerful and can't do nearly as much as other platforms. You could in theory build any application using Apex/VF (first being Java like, second being an enriched HTML) but in theory you could also build it using CGI, doesn't mean you should deal with all the issues and limitations to achieve the same goal you would with a different tech. First and foremost you should figure out what your app should do, then pick tech – mmix May 11 '11 at 21:12
  • I already know what I want my app to do, and I already know I can do it in Rails. My VP wants to use database.com for PR reasons and also because he thinks anything 'cloud' is better than anything not cloud. Your feedback as well as others' has helped change his mind. Thanks. – Philip Walton May 12 '11 at 20:24
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    You could build it in Rails with Database.com as the back-end and host it on Heroku. That should get enough hot cloud buzzwords to make your VP happy while still letting you leverage your Rails skill set. ;) Here's a presentation that will get you started: http://dreamforce-demo.heroku.com/slides#slide2 – Jeff French Sep 08 '11 at 03:56