Salesforce.com – Two Weeks In
I'm currently reading 'Behind the Cloud'
It's the end of my second week at Salesforce.com, and I seem to have hit the ground running... A day of orientation, a couple of days working through the Force.com and Chatter developer tutorials, then head down on a guide to Getting Started with the Force.com REST API, published alongside the REST API Developer Preview Webinar last Tuesday (the webinar replay is online now).
The getting started guide featured a sample Java web app that acted as an OAuth 2.0 client, redirecting the user to login at Salesforce.com and obtaining an access token with which to interact with the Force.com REST API. Cool stuff, but there were a couple of questions on the webinar asking how to do the same thing from other languages. It took just a few hours to rework the sample web app, first in Ruby, then in PHP. I've also noticed a .NET implementation, by Dan Boris - cool stuff!
I'm commuting up the peninsula about three days a week on Caltrain, which is working out pretty well - there's a station less than three miles from my house, and I can change to the Baby Bullet in San Jose, with the ride to San Francisco taking about an hour. I actually enjoy the time on the train - I just get my laptop and 3G card out and tap away - in fact, I'm on the train right now, somewhere near Palo Alto. 
So - two weeks in, I've published three pieces on *force.com, seen some very cool ISV demos at the second AppQuest judging round, and I'm off to Internet Identity Workshop XI tomorrow. If this sounds like your idea of fun, take a look at the Salesforce.com careers page. Lots of opportunities there, and, if you see something you like, don't forget to tell them that sent you!
Bookmarks for October 31st 2010
These are my links for October 31st 2010:
- Interact with the Force.com REST API from PHP - Force.com Cookbook - PHP sample code that uses the cURL and JSON PHP modules to implement a minimal web application able to obtain an OAuth 2.0 access token and interact with the Force.com REST API.
Bookmarks for October 29th 2010
These are my links for October 29th 2010:
- Interact with the Force.com REST API from Ruby - Force.com Cookbook - Ruby sample code that uses the OAuth2 library and the Sinatra web application framework to implement a minimal web application able to obtain an OAuth 2.0 access token and interact with the Force.com REST API.
Bookmarks for October 26th 2010
These are my links for October 26th 2010:
- Google Search for Salesforce.com openings that mention 'identity' - LOTS of jobs open at Salesforce.com - this link filters out the identity-related reqs. Just one right now, but that will certainly change. Substitute 'identity' in the URL with your particular interest...
- Getting Started with the Force.com REST API - developer.force.com - This tutorial shows the basics of using the Force.com REST API. It walks through a simple Java Web application that authenticates the user to Force.com via OAuth 2.0, then creates, reads, updates, and deletes Force.com Account records via the new API. Note: As of Winter ’11 the Force.com REST API is still in Developer Preview and should not be used for production until its GA in a future release.
Moving On From Huawei
After just over a year at Huawei, it's time to move on... Later today I'll be handing back my Huawei laptop and badge; on Monday I'll be attending orientation at Salesforce.com, where I'll be joining the developer evangelism team.
It's been an interesting and productive year at Huawei - if you've been following my blog, you'll know that I've been doing some pretty low level stuff - Linux kernel drivers and server daemons, and I've learned lots about zero-copy technology and semaphores. All fascinating stuff, working with great people and visiting some cool places, but, still, I missed the interaction with a developer community that I enjoyed as Sun's 'OpenSSO Community Guy'.
As is traditional, I've trawled YouTube for an appropriate song to mark the occasion. I almost settled for Led Zep's Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, but stumbled across the Quivver remix of the same song - a very different take on the classic, and well worth a listen. If you like what you hear, you can pick it up on Perfecto Presents Another World