Lightning Connect

Lightning Connect provides seamless integration of data across system boundaries by letting your users view, search, and modify data that’s stored outside your Salesforce organization. For example, perhaps you have data that’s stored on premises in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Instead of copying the data into your organization, use external objects to access the data in real time via Web service callouts.
Available in: Salesforce Classic
Available in: Developer Edition

Available for an extra cost in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions


Traditionally, we’ve recommended importing or copying data into your Salesforce organization to let your users access that data. For example, extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools can integrate third-party systems with Salesforce. However, doing so copies data into your organization that you don’t need or that quickly becomes stale.

In contrast, Lightning Connect maps Salesforce external objects to data tables in external systems. Instead of copying the data into your organization, Lightning Connect accesses the data on demand and in real time. The data is never stale, and we access only what you need. We recommend that you use Lightning Connect when:
  • You have a large amount of data that you don’t want to copy into your Salesforce organization.
  • You need small amounts of data at any one time.
  • You want real-time access to the latest data.

Even though the data is stored outside your organization, Lightning Connect provides seamless integration with the Force.com platform. External objects are available to Salesforce tools, such as global search, lookup relationships, record feeds, and the Salesforce1 app. External objects are also available to Apex, SOSL,SOQL queries, Salesforce APIs, and deployment via the Metadata API, change sets, and packages.

For example, suppose that you store product order information in a back-office ERP system. You want to view those orders as a related list on each customer record in your Salesforce organization. Lightning Connect enables you to set up a lookup relationship between the customer object (parent) and the external object (child) for orders. Then you can set up the page layouts for the parent object to include a related list that displays child records.

Going a step further, you can update the orders directly from the related list on the customer record. By default, records that are based on external objects are read-only. But you can make an external data source writable, which lets users create, modify, or delete records that are based on external objects from that data source.

Note

Note

You can make external objects writable only when an OData or Apex custom adapter is used to connect Salesforce with the external data source. Writable external objects are not supported with the Salesforce adapter.

For information about using Apex DML write operations on external object records, see the Force.com Apex Code Developer's Guide.

Example

This screenshot shows how Lightning Connect can provide a seamless view of data across system boundaries. A record detail page for the Business_Partner external object includes two related lists of child objects. The external lookup relationships and page layouts enable users to view related data from inside and from outside the Salesforce organization on a single page.
  • Account standard object (1)
  • Sales_Order external object (2)
External object record detail page with standard object Account related list and external object Sales_Order related list
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