Salesforce Data Cloud
Salesforce has taken a significant step forward in the AI(Artificial Intelligence) realm with the release of Data Cloud.
It offers a unified platform helping organizations leverage their data more effectively.
What is Salesforce Data Cloud?
Data Cloud is a platform that organizes, unifies, and consolidates data into a single source. It enables businesses to create unified customer profiles, run targeted marketing campaigns, etc.
Overview of the Data Cloud Architecture
As mentioned above, businesses can leverage their data effectively, but they must ingest data stored in external databases with different schemas into the Data Cloud instance.
- Data Ingestion: Salesforce offers 250+ built-in connectors, like Salesforce CRM, B2C Commerce, and Marketing Cloud, to connect external data sources to Data Cloud. Data can also be ingested from data lakehouses like Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3.
- Data Streams & Mapping: After connecting to external databases, users can create a data stream for each table, requiring a Data Lake Object (DLO) with the exact same schema and metadata as the table.
However, actionable insights and customer profile unification can only process data that follows Salesforce’s standardized metadata and schema.
Therefore, you need to map the attributes of the data lake objects to the attributes of the Data Model Object (DMO). You can map multiple Data Lake Objects to a single Data Model Object.
- Identity Resolution Ruleset: Since users ingest data from various sources, data duplication is possible, and a single customer may have different names on different platforms. The system uses the identity resolution ruleset to resolve these identities.
However, you need to store the unified customer profile data in different objects to ensure that the data ingested from external sources remains unchanged.
The object used in this case is the Unified Data Model Object (Unified DMO).
Once you have the records in the Unified Data Model Object, you can apply AI-powered actions to those records, such as generating calculated insights, performing customer segmentation, and more.
What if There’s No Built-in Connector for Your External Database?
Salesforce provides many built-in connectors with Data Cloud to maintain the no-code policy. However, there may be instances where a default connector doesn’t meet your specific requirements.
In such cases, you can use Salesforce Ingestion APIs to connect to your specific data source. Ingestion APIs need the schema file to be in OpenAPI format.
They act as the interface between external data systems (such as databases, applications, or third-party platforms) and the Data Cloud.
Ready to integrate your system with Salesforce Data Cloud? Hire Salesforce Developers, our team of experienced developers is here to help!
How Do Ingestion APIs Work in Data Cloud?
Salesforce Data Cloud offers two interaction patterns — bulk and streaming — to cater to various business requirements.
- Streaming APIs for Real-Time Data: The Streaming API helps ingest real-time data. It allows external systems to push updates to Salesforce Data Cloud in a continuous stream. This is ideal for scenarios where you need to capture data as events happen.
- Bulk Data Ingestion: For large volumes of data, Salesforce Data Cloud supports bulk ingestion through the Bulk API, which accepts CSV files. This is a more efficient method for handling massive datasets, allowing you to load data periodically.
The Bulk API is ideal for importing historical data or performing large-scale migrations and supports high throughput for big data use cases.
Need Help Integrating Your System?
With our expertise in data integration, we’ll guide you through an efficient transition. Reach out to us today to learn how we can assist you in harnessing Salesforce Data Cloud’s full potential.