Introduction
Force.com is a complete application development platform that provides tools for managing data, logic, and user interfaces of your cloud apps. Database.com is the underlying database that powers Force.com and all the applications built on the platform, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Chatter.
If you are a Force.com developer, you are already using Database.com to manage the data for your application and to automatically expose your data in both a REST API and SOAP API. It also provides a Metadata API to handle changes to your data model.
If you are a Java developer and you want to build a Java application that accesses data stored in Database.com, the Database.com Java SDK enables you to quickly build applications. With this SDK, you can:
- Use Database.com to store your application data
- Interact with data already written to Database.com by, for example, one of your Force.com applications or by your Sales Cloud application
- Leverage the Database.com user security model to manage data access for your application
- Extend existing Force.com applications with Java logic
The SDK is not tied to any particular runtime. You can build applications that run on your own server, on Amazon's EC2, or other cloud runtimes as long as you can make HTTPS connections to Database.com.
You can use the Database.com Java SDK with any organization that has Force.com API calls enabled. This includes Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, and Database.com Editions.
The SDK consists of the following components.
API Connector
The SDK is built on existing Force.com APIs. A core service connector class is responsible for managing connections to the API for the application. You configure this connector using a connection URL string which can be provided in property files, system properties, or environment variables. The connector automatically handles session refreshes after expiration and it can use the OAuth module to inject the session ID. The connector uses WSC for the actual protocol implementation.
JPA Provider
The JPA provider enables you to use Database.com as a persistent data store for entities defined in Java using the JPA standard. You can define entities in pure Java and the JPA provider automatically manages the schema in Database.com. It also enables you to map existing entities in Database.com to JPA entities so you can query and operate transactionally on data that's already in Database.com, such as your CRM entities. The JPA provider is based on the DataNucleus Access Platform.
OAuth Authentication and Authorization
If you're building an application for authenticated Database.com users, you can configure single sign-on and leverage the security model in Database.com using OAuth2.
Spring Security Plugin
This plugin enables you to use Spring Security for authentication and authorization in your applications. The Spring Security library uses the API Connector and the OAuth Connector to allow authentication via the Force.com APIs. There is also a custom Spring Security namespace that helps to simplify configuration.
Spring MVC Project Template
The SDK includes a Spring MVC project template distributed as a Maven archetype. You can quickly and easily create new projects from this template. The template sets up all the Maven dependencies needed for a new Spring MVC application using the JPA provider and Spring Security plugin.
To see the Maven archetype in action, read the quick start.
Code Generation Plugin
This plugin is not part of the Database.com Java SDK, but you can use it to generate Java classes based on the objects already present in your organization.